I used my first Model M keyboard at about ten years of age. Walking into a friends house, the air was filled with the clackety clack of someone banging away on a really loud keyboard. I asked my friend about it. "Dad just got an IBM PC2. Let's go have a look!" An IBM at home? In the mid-80's? Wow, this was big time. When we arrived at the source of that wonderful noise, his father looked over and smiled. He didn't relinquish the computer or anything, at that time .. but he did point out the keyboard. "There's nothing like it. It's the best." He really loved that thing.

A Magical Device, A Gateway to New Worlds

Over the years, that computer and keyboard was our gateway to any number of computer adventures: The Bard's Tale, Wordperfect, Tab Timov, and eventually Telix and the BBS scene. For every bit of that, I appreciated that keyboard: it improved my enjoyment of it all: our moves, our commands, our experiments .. all relayed to the computer by the re-assuring, solid sounding Model M. It was love at first click but my enjoyment and appreciation for this keyboard only grew. The more I saw, the better it looked.

I look at modern keyboard and think "Are you even serious?"

Modern keyboards are a big subject area: there is one for every taste and use, and they are filled with all kinds of features and functionality, most of which are of questionable value. Much of this innovation comes at expense, and at a cost to reliability. Additionally, much keyboard development time is seemingly devoted to the bells and whistles, to features that are used 0.0001% of the time. This detracts from focus on the core quality of the products. The market is full of cheaply made, blinged out, crazy looking monstrosities that may look cool but are fundamentally cheaply made terrible keyboards, with bad feel and short life expectancy.

"Get off my LAWN with your damned NEON!"

Take back lighting: a seemingly wonderful convenience, especially for the night owls out there. And yet, back lighting encourages you to look at your keyboard: the exact opposite of what you should be doing! You should be looking at the screen, your fingers flying confidently from key to key: you shouldn't NEED to see them! Do backlit keyboards help in this respect? For the record, I'll admit freely that I LIKE keyboard back lighting. Some of it is damned slick. But I know it's bad for me.

Other modern keyboard innovations are convenience oriented: stereo/volume controls, special windows keys, and whatever else. I think they're all fine, but none of it is necessary. I have had keyboard with these conveniences, and I found I never used them. The stereo controls, I tended to forget they were there. I'm not arguing against these keys, of course: they have their uses and I am sure some people use them all the time. They are just not necessary.

What do Model M types offer in terms of conveniences? Well, the modern ones actually do have the windows key, so if you're a Windows fan you're not going to miss out on that! They come with removable keycaps, which is something you don't see on many keyboards. This can be useful for cleaning, and also an excellent teaching tool. Pop off the caps and you force yourself to type without being able to reference the keys (as there are no labels!) Way back in the day, our teachers had a Model M keyboard for just this purpose: our typing tests, on occasion, had to be done blind.

"Lacking an abundance of modern conveniences, Model M style keyboard delivers in all areas that matter."

Once you get past the skin deep stuff, the Model M style keyboard outclasses pretty much everything else. For me, reliability is first and foremost: if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. These keyboard are known to last decades. Many from the 80's are still going strong. They are meant to be taken apart and cleaned, so, once a year, you can spend an hour and make it look like new again. This is the kind of keyboard you buy and keep for a long, long time. If it's a real Model M, hell, you may want to put it in your will and pass it down.

"She's a cadillac, alright. They don't built 'em like that anymore."

The layout: spacious. The number of keys I use without looking at the keyboard goes up significantly, just because of how easy it is to find things. The tactile feel of this keyboard is wonderful, better than 99% of what is out there. The price is acceptable: it's not a cheap keyboard by any stretch, but for what you get, the cost seems reasonable. Programmers, writers, and really anyone who spends a lot of time in front of a computer will realize tremendous return on investment.

Sadly, you can't buy the Model M anymore: unless you can source one in the secondary market, the best you can do today are the facsimiles made by Unicomp. They are very close to the originals in many respects, but Unicomp, like every other manufacturer in the world, has relaxed quality standards, and the replicas you buy today are not quite as nice as the ones they used to make. They are not as heavy, the materials are not as high quality, the feel not quite as rigid, and in general, modern examples do not have quite the same "royal feel" as the old ones. That said, they're still great: all things considered, I'd take them over anything else I have used! I don't have an original anymore. I use the unicomp. It's 100% excellent.

Modern examples do have one benefit that the older ones do not: they come with a USB connector, whereas the Model M's have a PS2 connector, which requires an adapter.

Nothing is perfect, of course. These keyboards are loud: perhaps some of the loudest you can buy. In the wrong environment this can be a problem. The are also physically large, so if physical space is at a premium, this may not be the right keyboard. Some keyboard enthusiasts may take exception to the mechanical mechanism used: a buckling spring, vs. cherry MX. I wouldn't argue: it is likely that the "feel" you get when a key breaks on a cherry keyboard is slightly more "accurate", giving you a better sense of precisely when the key broke. I have a couple of cherry keyboards and they are great keyboards with wonderful feel. Still, overall, I prefer the Model M style. My fingers move too quickly on it to even notice a slight drop in feel quality: they are already being propelled forward by the buckling spring to even think about the split second at which I knew, for certain, my keystroke broke.

Lastly, a note to people who have not explored keyboards. If you currently use "the keyboard that came with your computer", you are really missing out on the benefits of a quality mechanical keyboard. There is a certain feeling you get when using a quality device .. the work you are doing takes on a slightly different air. There is more authority as you pound away at the keys. Your hands and brain are rewarded in ways that you really can't conceive of if all you've used is a poor quality keyboard. You can work faster and more efficiently, simply because your hands always "know where they're at." Everything about the experience of working at a terminal is augmented. This is a piece of hardware that was designed and built in a time when the world had different priorities. Better ones.

In summary: This is the King of Keyboards.
You should probably get one.

PS I am not affiliated with IBM, Unicomp, or anyone associated with the manufacture or sale of the keyboard. I derive no financial or other benefit from this article whatsoever. I just think it's great, Steemians, and if you spent a lot of time in front of a computer, it's a real treat.

Photo credit: @walkerland, Wikimedia.