I bet some of you remember old, ugly, heavy keyboards that does CLICK CLAK and occasional goes PING. There's no other thing as sexy as those bastards (IMB and Uncomp Model M). Years passed, yet nothing new with buckling springs on horizon. Luckily for us there are few companies that make mechanical switches, and few companies that make keyboards out of those switches.

Cherry with their MXes, ALPS, Topre (master race) with semi mechanical rubber domes. They come in lots of flavors. Linear switches that have same "stiffness" all the way down. Switches with tactile bump, so you know by touch when press is registered. And even those comes in many variants. They differ in force needed to press the key, sound they make and many other smaller details. Everybody can find something suiting their needs. I won't kid you. Mechanical keyboard is luxury. It's not essential. It's not something that will make you typing/programming superhero. It's feels better, it's fun, and the noise makes you space-mates envy/angry and some people just wet their pants.

If you like to join this elitist club of people who think their keyboards will make them popular among ladies/gentlemen and you like to annoy family, go ahead, prepare $100 or more and read in:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboa...eyboards/)
[http://deskthority.net/](http://deskthority.net/)

Post your mechanical keyboard if you have one.

PS. Topre switches, despite having rubber domes, are considered mechanical thanks to springs and not having to bottom them out to register key.

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I'll start with my rig:

It's Chinese HPE 87. 87 is number of keys. Those keyboards are also know as TenKeyLess (it's more than ten less actually) since they don't have numpads.
I bought it for about $90 including shipping from china.
It's almost the same as Filco Majestouch.
Mine came in Cherry MX Blue flavor, which means it's clicky, tactile and pretty stiff.
Bright blue leds. I see them rarely.
Rubber feet. They make keyboard really hard to move.

Some of you may have spotted it in my [battlestation pics](http://forums.unixhub.net/showthread.php...93#pid2993).

It's really awkard for me to write on rubber dome/scissor switches keyboards now. I carry my HPE almost everywhere.

I would like to buy [KBT Pure](http://kbtpure.com/index.php/kbt-pure/vo...-ansi.html) with no backlight (since I touchtype) next. It's portable, as small as it can get and looks nicely. No F keys, no arrows. It's perfect. It's bit pricey though so I'm considering also [Noppoo Choc Mini](http://www.amazon.com/Noppoo-Mechanical-...B0091Q34EI), slightly bigger, much cheaper.

Obvious choice for portable keyboard would be Cherry MX Brown switches. They are tactile but much less clicky. I would also add o-rings (small rubber circles that comes under the keycap silencing it when bottoming out.