New toy came in today that belongs in this thread!
now I just need to figure out which switches and stabilizers I want… and keycaps lol… then you know… solder it and hopefully I don’t destroy it ha
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Soldering is the barrier to entry for me. I live in a “small” NYC apartment, so a soldering station would be weird to have. I’ve satisfied myself with Drop options thus far, which has already been a step up from basic keyboards.
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Me too. I’m looking at the Drop CTRL, and am trying to figure out which switch I want.
After playing with my switch tester on a regular basis, I’ve narrowed it down to Cherry MX Brown and Clear. I like the Clear a little better because I’m a heavy typist (i.e. I’m a terrible typist and use too much force), and I think the higher resistance of the Clears may suit my (lack of) style. Drop doesn’t offer them as an add-on for the CTRL, so I’m wondering if I really want to order all the components separately and put it together at home, or just be lazy, choose the Browns, let Drop put it together and see how it goes.
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Here’s my new Mac external keyboard. It’s the same size as the notebook, but necessary for workstation use and because my computer has the incredibly bad butterfly keyboard. The factory keyboard is completely unacceptable – they’ll replace it for free with the same broken design. And it takes a week!
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I now have 3 different switch testers! Clockwise from the top, Kailh, Cherry and Zealios.
They all feel so different, and I couldn’t picture it in my head when I read reviews of tactility, actuation force and bumps etc so now I can just try it out myself.
So far, for my 100% typing keyboard, I like the Cherry MX Clear and the Zealios V2 78g from their respective testers, and I still need to play with the Kailh Royals some more. Then I’ll let my son figure out what he needs for his mostly gaming keyboard. Since I’m paying for this, I may not even tell him I have a Zealios tester, as those switches are more expensive.
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OK, thought I’d jump in with a non-peripheral question. Just thinking about my actual computing hardware. I run ROON and music on a 2014 8 GB Mac Mini. It’s fine, but Apple is announcing significantly re-designed Minis. Much more modern. Although I might want to wait for Apple Silicon.
My main computer at home is a big, clunky Sager 9150 from 2012. It was a fast gaming laptop in it’s day, with an i7 3860? And 32mb of RAM, 2 internal “hybrid” disc drives. - or maybe one is SSD, I forget. Runs Win 10 Pro. I used it for work, and needed the RAM to compare sites under different browsers. I don’t game, and probably don’t need that but it still works. I was startled to find out that it can’t handle a Zoom background, despite what was a good GPU card.
So IF I were to do some hardware upgrades, what would be the plan? I run peripheral keyboard, camera, possibly mic. External storage for backup. The Mac has the Schiit attached.
I have grave doubts about running anything windows in only 8 GB. Even if I am a light duty user these days. I run Lightroom, sometimes Photoshop, Acrobat Pro. Office. A few browsers.
Any recommendations on paths to take? I expect to procrastinate a while unless the hardware develops issues, but it’s old enough in computer years.
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Yes, there are many different paths you could take.
If you only need one computer in one place the current cpus have 3 or 4 times the number of cores of your laptop and could handle Roon plus other work tasks. This could save some money over having separate comptuters for Roon and work.
If you have strong feelings re Mac or Windows then that will point you toward some paths and away from others.
It’s not a bad time to put together a new pc. Prices for cpu, ram and ssd are pretty good now.
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I’m still well served by the 2014 MacMini, doing Roon and Schiit duty. It’s useful to have a laptop rather than a tower as I do travel an occasionally the iPad Pro isn’t quite heavy duty enough - especially the keyboard choices.
Not really comfortable with using the Mini for occasional Linux/Unix tasks. I know it IS linux buried somewhere in there, but unless I go to the command line, it’s quite deeply buried indeed.
Would probably want some sort of Windoze laptop to replace the 2012 workhorse; and probably set up with some dual-boot capability as my Fedora machine finally broke down. Which brings up the question of distros. I do have an old eeePC with SSD drive that I could turn into the linux box, I suppose.
I think that many of the smaller laptops are too small and have too limited I/O. 14.5 to 15.5 is probably the size screen I want. The current one is that size, but pretty thick. An i7 3840QM at 2.8GHZ. I guess that’s not slow, just dated. (Or maybe it’s slower than a modern i5 with only 16gb of RAM) I’ve just had no need to keep up. I have the native Intel HD Graphics 4000, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX One of my drives is a 480GB SSD, the other a regualr drive with a 16gb buffer, I think.
I’m giving this info as a baseline for what I have.
Unfortunately the work from home wave has caused a spike in demand for laptops so there aren’t many bargains to be found.
The best values I have seen recently are for gaming laptops. I know you don’t need the gaming features but these machines have good core specs for cpu, ram, storage, connectivity and screen quality. It’s worth a look.
Maybe the work people just assumed gaming laptops are not for them so demand didn’t spike.
As for dual-boot it’s common to chuck the factory Windows install, repartition and install your preferred distro and Windows. The installs now mostly automagically detect an exiting o/s and set up the dual boot.
Also, Windows now has what they call Windows Subsystem for Linux which is a built-in linux VM. Depending on what you need it could be easier and more convenient than a dual-boot.
You can get grey market Windows Pro for $35 at Kingquin if you can’t re-use the included Windows.
Of course it’s black friday time so it wouldn’t hurt to see if something strikes you.
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Thanks, @NickZ, I found that back in 2012, gaming laptops had good core specs. That’s why my old beast has lasted so long. It’s from Sager, which is a custom rebranded Clevo. I checked their website, they seem to have some reasonable ones in the $1200 range. I guess MSI is a close competitor to them, with ASUS having some slightly downmarket gaming machines.
I’m not planning on grey marketing, although it may make sense if I can’t re-use an included Windows.
Haven’t even looked at distros recently. I think I outgrew Ubuntu, and was OK with OpenSUSE and Fedora. Tried plain main fork Debian for a while. I just like to keep in practice with it. And I tend to use it when I am doing some kind of competitive research on rival companies. TOR is just too locked down, so I sometimes can’t see the websites, and I think that security and anonymity is better with a 'nix variant.
Apple’s website just changed. The new Mini does have the M1 Apple Silicon chip…
The linux live usb’s are pretty good now. You can just boot from a flash drive and have linux running. Some distros allow persistent storage so you can save info on the flash drive and boot the whole thing from wherever you happen to be.
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That is certainly a thought. Probably a lot faster than they were 8 or 10 years ago when I first tried that.
Yes, live usb’s are smooth and totally usable. You have a wide choice of distros and desktops to choose from.
I haven’t had any issues with modern live usb’s messing up the installed o/s but you would probably want a good backup in place before you try one on a production machine.
I’m upgrading the Mac Mini to Big Sur now. Hope there are no regrets.I didn’t even bother to check first to see if the Roon core will tolerate it. But I did a Time Machine right before.
Just got my GMMK White Ice keyboard. It seemed to be the perfect beginner’s custom keyboard, and was half the price of the Drop CTRL.
It came with Gateron Brown switches, which are fine (and a huge step up from my Logitech K120), but since the keyboard is hot-swappable, I also ordered some Glorious Panda switches to see how they feel. The Glorious Pandas have been getting better reviews than the Drop Holy Panda equivalents.
I also ordered some new colored keycaps from Drop, thinking that white keys on a white case would be too drab, but after playing with the lighting, I think I will try to cancel my Drop order because with the lights out, the stock keys look very cool (or at least cool by newbie standards, since this is my first time playing with lights, LOL).
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Very nice. But the lights would hurt my eyes after a while. Lol.
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Haha, yes, I’m sure I’d have the same reaction if I was typing in the dark. But with the room lights on, the keyboard lighting acts more like an accent.
When I first plugged it in, all the colors were strobing across the keyboard, and I thought I was going to have an aneurism. Luckily I was able to turn that off. I’m a few decades too old for that kind of thing, so I’ll leave flashing lights to the kids. 
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