Recommendations for pre-assembled keyboards for a small office
Hello everyone,
I am currently setting a small office (6-8 people) and I'd like to get some nice keyboards. However having that many people typing on a nice clickly keyboard will be a bit loud. And, while tempting, I don't have the time to assemble 8 keyboards myself.
So I am asking you good folks for a recommendation on where I can purchase some pre-assembled keyboard with some quiet switches like https://divinikey.com/products/haimu-x-geon-hg-red-silent-linear-switches. The store would need to be able to ship to Europe at a reasonable price.
Both Ducky and keychron have some prebuilt with hotswap. For example the Ducky One 3, you could get it with Red Silent switches and if someone really hates the feeling you can just get new switches and swap them out.
I like silent reds too, and my wife thinks they're much more tolerable than the regular reds I had before. Though if you're buying keyboards for others, would it be possible to allow them to choose something for themselves? Not all people like linears, and many of my coworkers actually prefer laptop style scissor switches to "normal" mechanical ones.
My manager once suggested the company could sponsor a keyboard building workshop. She asked me to put together different kits that people could choose from, and then we'd build them together. They would pay for all hardware and provide tools but not pay for the time so we'd do it outside office hours. Then she quit and nothing more came of that.. I don't know the details of your situation but maybe that could be an option if you would like to go the DIY route? It could even double as a team building activity :)
Imagine what life was like when people used typewriters.
Those IBM Selectrics, especially. Hit keys (mostly) silently, hit Return, and that little ball goes BBBRRRAAAPPP! across the page all at once.
That said, I've been in offices where they used all IBM equipment (including Type-M keyboards) and after a while you don't hear the typing. That might be because you're going deaf, though.
The Selectrics weren't all that quiet. They were electromechanical not electronic, so you would have motor hum, and noises from the various other mechanisms.
Although it made them amazing to type on, in a way that conventional keyboards can't quite recapture.
I meant quiet compared to when the ball printed your line. I guess I should have specified that I was talking about the ones with the little LCD screen that would take all your text and then print it all at once.
(I'm pretty sure they were Selectrics, anyway. IBM for sure. They're what I learned to type on in school back in the dark ages. We weren't allowed to use that feature, but there's always someone that doesn't follow directions so we go to hear what it sounds like.)