I have quite a bit of experience with high quality keyboards. I learned to type on a manual typewriter, later graduated to electrics. My first computer was a TRS-80 CoCo which had a cheap chicklet type keyboard, up there with Apple’s laptops as one of the worst keyboards I’ve ever used. We soon upgraded it to one that had buckling spring mechanical key switches. It typed like an electric typewriter, which was awesome. Largely due to hours spent on that computer, I was typing 90+ wpm as a teenager (less common in the 1980s than it is now). In college I had a PC-XT clone, a Leading Edge Model D, which had another excellent keyboard. It felt like buckling springs, but may have had the Alps switches that were popular back then. All through the 1980s, just about every PC had this kind of keyboard. This keyboard defined “the sound of work” in offices across the USA.

Over the 90s cheap bubble dome keyboards became more common, until the turn of the century they were ubiquitous and it became nigh impossible to find a mechanical buckling spring keyboard. In 1999 I special ordered one from Unicomp and I still have it today; it works perfectly though it has an outdated PS/2 connector.

Later I discovered the ergonomic joy of ten-key-less 87-key keyboards. Chop off the numpad that you never use, and the mouse (trackball in my case) gets closer. The rest of the keyboard has the exact same layout (including home,end,arrows) as the classic IBM 101, so your hands and fingers know where to go without thinking. But it’s more comfortable because you don’t have to stretch your right arm as far to reach the mouse.

Problem: nobody makes an 87-key buckling spring keyboard (update: see below). I own and have extensively used a few 87-key keyboards with other mechanical switches: Cherry, Oetmu, Zorro. They’re way better than bubble dome switches (no double or missed strikes), but not as nice as buckling springs. Why? Two key differences:

• Crisp: a buckling spring has a crisp snap when the key strikes. You can type with confidence, nary any doubt whether a light key hit struck. This tactile snap is strong and obvious, unlike clicky switches like Cherry Blues that I find barely perceptible.
• Sound and Actuation: with a buckling spring, the click, the tactile bump, and key actuation are simultaneous. No so with most other switches. Commonly, the click and tactile bump happen before the key actuates.
• Force: a buckling spring has a peak actuation force of around 75 grams, a bit more than other mechanical switches. This protects against accidental strikes when you are just resting your fingers on the keys, or your fingering is a bit sloppy and you barely brush an adjacent key.

It sounds small, but these two points make all the difference in the world. There is nothing like a buckling spring keyboard. Cherry and other mechanical switches are better than bubble domes, but pale in comparison.

Update: in 2021, Unicomp came out with the Mini-M, an 87-TKL with buckling springs. I am typing these words on this keyboard. It’s awesome!