I've been looking around at the selection of about 5 european retailers (some norwegian ones) and i can't seem to find a single provider that provides a decent keyboard at a decent price, with a numpad and arrow keys that has brown switches. is there any reason for this? are there providers who sell MX browns from america at a decent price?
I don't want to end up with shitty reds. (tried em, hated em).
Solutions, anyone?
What localisation do you need?
Thing is that mechanical keyboards are sold better in North-America than in Europe, the manufacturers don't bother make all types of mechanical keyboards for European localisations.
However, the good news is that Cherry, the German company that actually makes the MX switches, now has started a new product line of MX keyboards, that retail for..... 55 EUR incl. VAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just keep an eye on it, the localisation you need will be coming out very soon if it's not out already.
All MX keys will be available, and it's a standard 105 key IBM compatible keyboard layout, and although it's not a "gaming" keyboard by style and colour scheme, Cherry keyboards are made for business use, they are of good quality, and these keyboards have Windows-key lock and 14-key rollover, so they are definitely suitable for gaming! This thing weighs a whopping 830g for a compact keyboard!
I'll give you the link to the German localisation version of the keyboard:
http://www.atelco.de/USB/88414/Cherry+MX-Board+3.0+-+keyboard.article
By the way, this is the list of models that ship at this time, other models will no doubt follow:
http://www.cherry.de/PDF/EN_CHERRY_MX-Board_3_0.pdf
You'll see that the keyboard contains a steel base plate, trademark of good keyboards, and that for only about half the price of most mechanical keyboards.
If you can use a US Keyboard with Euro Symbol, you can already get a brown key model. I still have to wait for a suitable localisation, I have to have direct access to English, German, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish characters, accents and interpunction, because I use those languages every single day, so I can't use a US keyboard efficiently, the most efficient for me is a Belgian keyboard layout, which is made for multiple languages, and those are always last to be released lol... but I will certainly be getting a few of these as soon as they come out in Belgian layout.
Euro symbol? what would that be?
thank you for fast and great responses! will look into this shortly!
On second thought, i'm actually getting the blue switch keyboard, will it have the same layout as Nordic keyboards?
they look all fine and dandy, but i.. yeah, not too sure, not a keyboard aficianado
The US keyboard is the standard QWERTY keyboard, but the GBP and USD symbols are not under 3 and 4, and the "æ, ø, å" keys are not present, but when the language is set to a nordic language, the a and e will automatically join in most applications will some kind of spelling checker enabled, like mail or document editing applications, and the ø and å are easy to type by setting the accent manually with either / or °, which are on the board, but then I'm used to placing accents manually, since on a multilingual keyboard like the Belgian one, all accents have to be placed manually because there aren't enough keys to include the Dutch, French and German accented characters all on one keyboard.
What I can tell you is that I don't expect anything else but top quality from Cherry. However, the keyboards will have very simple esthetics, they won't look like fancy gaming keyboards, but they'll undoubtedly perform a whole lot better and be more durable and reliable, and most probably they will be crazy thoroughly ergonomically certified and tested, because that's what German manufacturers tend to do.
I checked it out, i pretty much need nordic i'm afraid. :/
just not very eager to get used to tenkeyless, is it any good?
That depends on what you do with the keyboard. I personally don't like tenkeyless at all, which has also to do with the Belgian keyboard layout that I use, since the top row numbers are in the "shift" or "capital" register, like on a French keyboard, instead of being directly accessible like on a QWERTY/QWERTZ keyboard, because of the accents for characters being on the number keys and the accents are much more needed than the number keys when writing a standard text, so the direct access to numbers is via the number keypad. I think that on a nordic keyboard, that's not so much the problem, and it's more a matter of habit than necessity.
The Nordic layouts will come out though, and in the mean time I still mainly use my old Logitech G11 and G15 keyboards and and old IBM XT keyboard, so I will definitely wait for the Belgian models to come out with brown and green keys. I'm not buying blue keys anymore, did it, donn't like it enough in comparison to IBM keyboards. I like brown for silence, but green is closest to buckling spring.