Comment by dsr_
2 days ago
Different people have different preferences.
I suspect a bunch of smaller manufacturers would have more success with their products if there was an easy way to try them out for a week or two. Buying hardware sight-unseen incurs a heavy risk penalty. Buying it after seeing it in a store for ten minutes is some reduction, but not a lot.
How many people would spend $250 on a split ergo ortho keyboard having never touched anything other than a laptop or maybe a mushy $12 pack-in included with their Dell at work?
What's the appropriate solution other than inflating the price even more to cover a generous return policy?
I might buy a Keyboard.io or a Moonlander... but there's a pretty high risk I won't love it. These things can be subtle: I quite like the X-Bows Knight I'm typing on now, and can't stand the Keychron Q10 which, by all rights, I ought to find about as comfortable.
Once upon a time there were these places called “retail stores” where you could go look at actual products and even try them out before buying them.
Alas.
That works for a conventional mouse: you've used one before. This one is a little different shape, a little bigger, ooh, no wires. That's fine: in five minutes you know whether it's OK.
How long does it take to decide whether you love or hate a thumb-ball? A big ball? A SpaceMouse? Has anyone who didn't use a ThinkPad decide to buy a keyboard with an integrated nubbin?
Sure, I can buy twenty devices for $200 each and return 19 of them. That puts 19 items into "open box" status, causes me to re-pack and re-ship and track 19 items, and makes 19 vendors vaguely cranky at me.
I get your point. When I had RSI in my right elbow and tried to find a replacement for a traditional mouse there were soooo many attempts. And I had to use them for a while both to see if they helped, but also to see if I managed to use them properly. Like, a mouse where you rolled a ball with your thumb I never got friendly with even after a few weeks.
In the end the problem was actually moving the hand away from the keyboard, so no tilted mouse, thumb mouse or track pad worked. A RollerMouse saved me. I even game with it now, heh.
Just lucky my company paid for all of it (and the ones I didn't use they got back by me distributing to others within the company with issues)
I bought a Moonlander two years ago and the price (plus shipping to Europe) did really hurt. I also had to spend a lot of time into the complex configuration of the individual key mapping. And to learn the mapping.
It was absolutely worth it and I would do it again. I love that the keys aren’t staggered like on a typical keyboard — which I find rather silly — but instead are perfectly aligned in straight columns. And the thumb keys. And the configurable chords (yes, chords, that's nerdcore). And much more.
I bought a Voyager about a year ago. On day 1 I nearly had buyer’s remorse because I topped out at about 20wpm, even though all my keyboards have been ergo since 2001.
After more practice, and after swapping out the key caps, I now think this is possibly the last keyboard I’ll ever buy. I’m having a hard time imagining anything better (though I could use maybe 1 extra thumb key on each side).
Over the years I've gifted a few nice keyboards to people and their immediate response has often been "why didn't I get a proper mechanical keyboard sooner!"
They had only used cheap plastic or laptop keyboards until then and never saw a keyboard as a tool to invest in for their profession (which often required plenty of typing).
I was very uncertain when I bought my KINESIS keyboard. It really really helps my wrist pain though. If it hadn't have worked I probably would've returned it to Amazon after a week or two.
I'm not sure where you're based, but don't you have consumer protections that allow you to return goods you regret buying? I know that even in places with good return regulations, there are exceptions, but where I live, I could buy a monitor from Amazon to try it out, and if I don't like it, just return it within the 30 days and buy another one. I assumed it was like this in most of the western world? Maybe I'm a bit naive.
I know a bunch of people who do this for cloth shopping (which isn't a great idea considering everything else except themselves, obviously), where they don't know exactly what size will fit them, so they buy the same dress in 2-3 sizes, try them out at home then return the ones that didn't fit.
>I could buy a monitor from Amazon to try it out, and if I don't like it, just return it within the 30 days and buy another one. I assumed it was like this in most of the western world? Maybe I'm a bit naive.
1. While many places have no questions asked return policies, many also have more stringent return conditions, such as not allowing exchange for dissatisfaction. For tech retailers, where the margins are low and the goods value is high, I often find they're worse than with clothes, for instance.
2. I did some cursory searching and it doesn't look like even EU guarantees the right to return for satisfaction reasons. The closest is the 14 day right of withdraw for distance purchases, but that can be waived and doesn't cover in-store purchases.
3. Even when returns are theoretically allowed, there are many ways for retailers to make it a hassle, such as not covering return shipping, which for a monitor could be a sizeable amount of money.
I'm fairly certain such regulations don't exist anywhere. They would be far too easy to exploit, raising the cost of doing business and exposing them to outright fraud. Regulations meant to protect consumers usually protect them from dishonst business practices.
The type of return you're talking about is usually intended to encourage people to make a purchase and to protect the reputation of a business. Yet the moment they detect abuse, abuse being return patterns that are atypical or that will end up costing the business more money in the long run, you can be sure they will stop honouring their return policy.
This is 100% a European law that exists. You are entitled returns within 14 days of purchase for most goods. No reason need be provided.
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> a mushy $12 pack-in included with their Dell at work
For what they are, the standard Dell keyboards are quite nice.
Pepperidge Farm remembers when Fujitsu computers (those assembled in germany into the 2010s) used to come with rebadged steel-plate Cherry keyboards. Okay, they had mushy browns I think, but still. You go unpack the bundled keyboard and it weighs a kilo. They were still rubberdomes (G83 I think?), just really nice ones.
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