Das Keyboard - ARE junk. Here's why.

The "DAS KEYBOARD" (or The "The Keyboard") is an interesting piece of both "allegedly" good quality switches, piss poor design, misleading advertising (outright bullshit) and useless customer support.

The pro-model.

The ultimate model.

They do use the apparently remarkable "Cherry" (brand) key switches, who's main claim to fame is that although gold plating can be made remarkably thin and the contact area is remarkably small, the switch contacts are gold plated - which makes them corrosion and arc resistant, and they are rated to 50 million cycles - or so they claim - you know, "press any key" + "unpress" = one cycle.

This is their main claim to fame - the longevity of the key switches.

"Yes the Das Keyboard (by implication) will last as long as the switches it is composed of - that's 50 million presses of each of the key switches..."

But is that the actual contacts are claimed to be rated for 50M cycles? Or is that the key switches - the entire key mechanism, is rated to 50M cycles? A small but interesting technicality.

And under what circumstances?  Is that in a surgically clean laboratory? Or is this in the real world.


See the real issue is that while the Cherry brand Key Switches, may when placed under a special little machine that presses them 3.3 times a second, or 100 times a minute, or 500 times in 5 minutes, or 50,000 times in 500 minutes... etc.,

The calculation looks like this - 50,000,000 contacts / 3.3 strokes a second * 3600 (strokes per hour) * 24 (hours per day) * 365 (days per year) = 4.8 years....

In the real world - you don't hit the one key at 3.3 strokes per second, all day, every day, 24 hours a day, NON STOP for 4.8 years...

Given that the average "committed" typist, in amongst all the multi tasking etc., on the PC as well as other things, does about an average of 30 words per minute at 5 letters on average per word, in about 4 or 5 hours per day - in an 8 hour work day, 5 out of 7 days per week and about 40 weeks of the year - and each key will be on average (kind of) be used about say 5% of the time, that means the keys on average will take about 380 years (I guess) for them to make the 50 million key strokes.

Theoretically - even if my speculative assessment is clearly wrong, they, the Das Keyboard people and their advertisers, claim that most rubber dome boards etc., are dead within about 5 to 10 million key strokes, taking some 3 or 4 years; with a board that is rated to 50 million key strokes (per switch), one would think that it would become an heirloom piece...

But not so.

Why do I say this:

So I'd say they have done predictive analysis to estimate the amount of depressions the contact will actually last for -  electrical switch contact wear analysis, is soooooo old hat technology - from the very first "electrical contacts" from the time of Edison etc., when switches were put into semi-automatic use.

From phone exchanges to ignition points (contacts) and Morse Code Keys etc.. all a mixture of voltages, contact materials, etc... and the issue of spark erosion and oxidisation of the contact faces.


So while the contacts may actually last for 50 million cycles, which I doubt too - I can't see the actual switch mechanism, lasting any real time in the real world, with dust and fluff and crumbs etc., - I'd say, "Not a fucking chance".

I call total bullshit -  total and absolute bullshit on the longevity - directly or associated with the claimed durability of the key switch contacts - and the switch mechanism - in the real world.

I say that "Cherry", the makers of the Keyboard Key Switches are making this crap up by presenting a biased laboratory clean room test results / predictive analysis only.

Their claim is like saying you will have your teeth in your head,by sucking air in and out for a decade. What they are leaving out, is that your in the middle of a sand storm and chewing up one teaspoon of sand every hour of every day, for 4.8 years

Your teeth, just like the key switches when operated in the real world, will be worn down and gone within a decidedly much shorter period of time, than the IMPLIED longevity of the key switches, and thus the life span of the DAS Keyboard.

So in the real world all of this super duper long lasting Das Keyboard with the Cherry key switches, is total bullshit.

But the real crunch comes with this caveat, while the keyboards sell direct for about $140 - $150 US - which is a high price for the keyboards

Exclusive daskeyboard.com 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee

At Das Keyboard, we stand behind our products. If you purchase a product from www.daskeyboard.com and are not entirely satisfied, you can return it for a full refund within 30 days.

So if it lasts past 30 days in a clean office environment - OK..... probably will.

But when we take it further to the extended warranty:

Terms and Conditions

• Money-back guarantee only applies to products purchased from www.daskeyboard.com.
• All returned products need to be in their original condition and packaging with all accessories. (not true)
• Das Keyboard warrants to the original purchaser that your Das Keyboard hardware product shall be free from defects in material and workmanship***, which occur during normal use, for one year from the date of purchase. In the European Union, any warranty period less than two years shall be increased to two years. Except where prohibited by applicable law, this warranty is nontransferable and is limited to the original purchaser.
• Products must be returned to the point of purchase or such other place as Das Keyboard may direct with a copy of the sales receipt or dated itemized receipt. Customers are responsible for shipping charges to return the product to Das Keyboard.
• All items within warranty will be credited, replaced or repaired except for products that are damaged due to misuse, abuse, spillage, accident, negligence or modification by any party other than Das Keyboard.
• Warranty does not extend to any damage that occurs in shipment or due to natural phenomenon (i.e. lightning or line surges).
• Warranty will be voided if the original serial number on the product is removed by accident or intentionally.
• Product purchased through auctions, online auctions, etc. are not covered by manufacturer warranty.
• No credit will be given for non-warrantied merchandise or merchandise with physical damage.

*** Well a SHIT design that allows the key switches to ingest dust and fluff and crumbs, is a material defect in the design. It's BAD - ultra stupidly bad workmanship.

Hit them with THIS fact on your warranty claim.




 

(as a for instance - I just have to stick this in)

I have an IBM model M Keyboard - I love the slab of steel feel and the LOUD machine gun noise it makes when I go full steam... only it's not heavy enough and not loud enough.... but it's a brilliant Keyboard...

Nothing like them at all - everything else is fucking crap - for the fixed office application.

But I do live in a dusty area and everything just gets coated with it... dust, fluff, food etc... gets on this keyboard, while the outside never gets cleaned, the inside, the key switches are spotless inside.

I have had this keyboard for a ummm..... ummm ahhhhh a fucking long time... and it works perfectly.

The only reason it's out of service is that the plug on the mother board has a coach bolt in the way... yes - I do make my own computers, using steel, timber and bolts... yeah no shit., and at the time it seemed easier to get a new keyboard than do a disassembly and a redrill on this one particular bolt, to another location.

So you may say, "Oh my god - it's so fucking dirty!" - yes - that is right - and the dust and fluff and hair and all - is ON the outside of the mechanisms, and NOT on the inside of the mechanisms - which is what actually counts. Cosmetically it probably could do with a clean - but technically - it does not need cleaning.

I give it a good vaccum now and then - and clean all the crap off it... and that is it.

It's been this way for years... and years and years and years.... never a fault or a sticky key or any gritty feeling in the mechanism - nothing.

It works perfectly.

But the Das Keyboard - a few months in the same environment - and it's DEAD.

The Das Keyboard is a piece of shit.


Ahhh but the makers of Das Keyboards,

They say this:

"Das Keyboard compares to the legendary IBM Model M. Its best-in-class, mechanical, gold-plated key switches provide a tactile and audible click that makes typing effortless."

"Oh the Brilliant IBM Model M - our keyboard is just like theirs - by implied association" - they lie....

It compares nothing to the IBM Model M - The Das Keyboard is a piece of shit.


Skip edited a bit:

http://www.daskeyboard.com/about-us/

What are we about? We’re about taking the typing experience to the next level.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 2005, in a personal quest to improve his own typing speed and accuracy, Metadot founder and self-proclaimed “Uber Geek” Daniel Guermeur (follow @supercobra) asked to have a totally blank keyboard created. To his surprise, his typing speed doubled after just a few weeks of use.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 2008 the makers of Das Keyboard decided to upgrade the keyboard again. Their goal was to make the best keyboard on the planet. The result: the Das Keyboard Professional with traditional key markings and the Das Keyboard Ultimate with blank keys.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Das Keyboard is now available with or without inscriptions to all who want the nirvana of typing experiences.

(that is until it gets a little dust in it - then it's fucked)

I will now tell you why the Das Keyboard are such pieces of shit - and should be avoided at all costs.

1. They are designed by a team of idiots.

Why are the designers idiots?

The biggest killer of everything, is essentially dust and moisture. Given that I don't type under water and I do live in a rural area with dust from ploughing etc., in the vicinity - which translates as a fine continuous build up of the dust over everything, over time - what happens is that this dust gets into the key switches, and it makes them jam and stick in no time at all.

So you city dwellers, may think, "Oooo look at the dust from the tractor! That is sure to roone a keyboard!"  Well not exactly. I am not sitting in the dust cloud, on the side of the tractor.



It's what blows down wind and settles and gets picked up again etc.. as it moves around the country side.  So there are farms from here to eternity, and they all plough several times a year, and so the air has a general fine dustiness about it, some times a great deal and some times hardly any.








If you look at the fine back ground haze in the air this is what I am talking about. This is the dust in the air - very dilute... very fine...  gets into everything.

So we take this:

Plus these:

(just made to suck in the fucking dirt)

Doing This

  

And we get this:


All of the "low keys" are the ones that are not returning to the correct height, because they binding in their slides, because of the ingress of dust into the mechanism. 
 

The worst of them ARE sticking at the full keystroke and a full half of them, are already binding... 

This is only after a months kind of solid use - spread unevenly over a few months - and then sat aside for a few more months.

Out of the 104 (?) keys, about 10 are staying stuck at the bottom of the stroke, another 30 or so are grabbing and gripping in their slides (on the way to jamming) and most of the rest of them feel "dry and gritty" - they do not slide nice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
The key switches SHOULD have come with dust shields on them - because if you take them, and the keyboards they are in, out of the clean laboratory or the air conditioned offices that get vacuum cleaned every day and then stick them in the real world, where there are varying amounts of dust, you have a complete piece of shit keyboard that fails in a matter of months.

So the sales pitch is just an outright marketing lie. OK the contacts are rated (they claim) for 50 million depressions, BUT the entire mechanism is designed to trap and ingest dust.


It's a con job - they keyboards are fucking junk. 

It's like while they claim to have made the "perfect eternal mechanical keyboard", the truth is that they are designed to fail by ingesting dust and fluff into the key switches.

The cleaning technique that the Das Keyboard people demonstrate on their site is also entirely WRONG - and it makes the keyboards fail sooner... 

When you invert the keyboard to about 45* - and tap the crap loose, guess what? 

Most of the dirt and dust and grit is going to land underneath the key caps, which act as little buckets, and when you turn the board right side up - guess where the crap lands? In the key switch mechanism... and when you press the keys, the dirt goes into the slides and starts grinding them up even quicker.....

I recall on their site, that they do not make the recommendation of VACUUM cleaning the board... take that for a hint.

I think the people who design AND market Das Keyboard, are a bunch of lying arseholes who design a very expensive keyboard, that has the planned obeselescence properly designed into it.

"Oh it's a legend - just like the IBM Model M Keyboard" - no it's fucking not.

The keyboards have been designed to fail through a totally useless design (or the designers really are idiots) ((or both)) and the very cleaning methods ascribed, simply make the boards run worse and wear out faster.

It really is a piece of shit keyboard - using a conjob to sell it - runs great for a little while, and you recommend to all your friends that they buy them too  - then all the keys start jamming, and because it was so great - they expect that you will go and buy another one..... and another one, and another one...

The Das Keyboard people are scam artists, flogging a shit product, through misleading implied marketing.

"Oh it's just like the model M" (Yes we are that good - we are a TRADITIONAL quality keyboard maker - they SAY about themselves)

"The key switches last 50 million operations" (Only in a clean dustless laboratory) 

"We designed the best keyboard in the world." (but only because we say so. I don't and I say different - and I say it's a junk keyboard - because it is.) 

There are videos of them coming up with stuck keys on YouTube etc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZtkTOhxJnY


The glowing testemonials about them - are all made when the board is NEW and out of the packet. 

My review of the keyboard, is made after a few months of use in a dusty outback town - about 1 month of kind of solid use - tops; with a few more months of sitting on the desk. 

The Das Keyboard has been completely stopped by 20 or 30 milligrams of dust.

All the keys are gritty, and half of them are jamming.



The Das Keyboard marketing dept claims to be making the worlds best keyboard, the amount of spin and bullshit that this PR crap represents is outrageous - it's barefaced outright lying - all by inferences, implication and association .

It's just a fucking con job - and they are prepared to sell you a lie to make a sale.

Hey - any person can locate switches on a circuit board - which is all they have done - a neat little nesting arrangement - with the idiot Cherry brand switches, that are rated to 50 million contacts, and then call that a keyboard.

But they can't make a fucking keyboard. 

What they have created, "Das Keyboard" is a piece of shit.... it digests dust like a car going through a sand storm without an air filter.

What they have made is just a cosmetic bullshit trip. A very expensive throw away keyboard, that contrary to claims, of longevity by association with the claimed life of the contacts, "and it's just like the legendary IBM Model M" means that you also have an immortal "mechanical" keyboard.

You don't have an immortal keyboard - you have a piece of shit sold by the arseholes using their hyped up marketing bullshit.



Since I am both a brilliant designer, engineer, and a proactive kind of guy - who hates waste, I designed some seals - durable, easy to fit and simple to make, and I approached the company with a licencing offer. 

And to go beyond the scam of the defective by design, I can make a board that is good for about 100 million depressions - without fail - on every key. 

I can do this... easy. I can guarantee I can do this.

But to rectify what I initially thought was a simple piece of "stupid" design, by stupid designers... 

I said this to the Das Keyboard makers:

Dust and Crud Resistance.

The DK Pro is a nice board, cherry switches - great. But the dumb fucks who designed this, obviously work in dry, clean, ai4r conditioned offices, that get vacuumed regularly and this explains the design flaws.

I live in a dusty outback location, where there is a LOT of dust from the dirt roads, and ploughed fields etc., and it's generally quite dry where I am.

The fine atmospheric dust gets into the keyslides and they begin to stick and bind.

Sure I can cover the board up at night and when I am nit using it, but I am generally on the PC for much of the time and while the deep typing sessions are sporadic, and this PC has been offline for a few months, due to the need for parts etc.,

What I have found that these keyboards have NO resistance to airborn dust.

50,000,000 switch operations until contact failure? Try about 20,000 until the Cherry switches start grinding and sticking in their slides.

At the absolute minimum, a redesign must be implemented - and I will license my design to fix this problem, permanently.

Contact me to make the deal.



And how did they reply?

Like so:


| Hi,
|
| Thanks for contacting us with your feedback. Please keep in mind that we do not manufacture the key switches - those are made by Cherry - and so we have no creative control over the design of the key switches.
|
| We appreciate you taking the time to contact us. Please let us know if you have any additional comments.
|
| Regards,
|
| Das Keyboard Support


They made NO effort to find out about MY actual solution. They made no effort to forward my idea onto the person who has the brains to make the decision (????) and they dismiss me with an idiot reply.

Is it any wonder? 


The Das Keyboard is no IBM Model M keyboard, it will never give 20 or 30 or 40 years of flawless service - why? because the Das Keyboard people are a bunch of scam artists, selling a piece of shit.

 Your getting sold a disposable keyboard by design, with the hyped up stamp of imaginary quality and longevity stamped on the sales pitch.,

And now you know why I say this. 


If you want the REAL item that these con artists try to rip off by association - go to the real people who are making the REAL IBM Model M keyboards.

http://www.pckeyboard.com/

http://pckeyboard.com/page/category/UKBD

http://pckeyboard.com/page/UKBD/UNI0P4A

I have had dealings with them though, and to put it bluntly, any "sales dept" with staff in it that are unable to recognise that offering to ONLY send it through FEDEX, and the sending it, ONLY costs $97 to Australia - on a $70 Keyboard; is some how a fucking HUGE incentive to make purchases - for everyone else, all around the world.

i.e. "Why would we want to airmail it for $20, when Fedex costs FIVE times as much?"

Yet their sales department is filled with people who "don't get it", and see NO benefit in offering alternatives to shipping via FEDEX, and their sales manager is too lazy to return the calls to discuss the subject, and who is smart enough to reward innovative thinking.

"A small change in the shipping method results in the sale of 50,000 units and we won't give this guy 3 or 4 keyboards for free, and some kind of percentil gratuity for the effort?"

"Ohhh no - we can't make one phone call and do that."

True. A brilliant Keyboard - with global sales being crippled by their own Sales Dept.

But if they offered airmail postage, via the USPS, and it came to a saner price of around $20, I'd go and buy a life times supply of the keyboards - immediately.

If I could buy 3 with say $50 freight, I would buy them straight away.

I imagine so many other people around the world would as well.

And I would be inclined to make repeat purchases, as gifts, so that other people can use them too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The IBM Model M keyboard is the ONLY keyboard that has my endorsement.

For quality, for brilliant design, for durability - it's a properly engineered product, put together by people (originally) who KNEW how to design things.

(Note: It's not as good as what I design, but it has the fundamentals)

The Das Keyboard really is a over hyped conjob, by a sleazy marketing dept, for a junk product.

The Das Keyboard is not even remotely comparable to the real IBM Model M Keyboard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess in finality on this issue, I have sought a refund for this Keyboard through Mwave and they are pure scum to deal with, and I have offered to help the people in Das Keyboard to refine their design and  they just acted like typical arrogant cunts about the whole thing.

Merikens tend to have that bad problem of the "know all - know fuck all" syndrome - and yes they can use their Computer Aided Drafting systems to put key switches on circuit boards, but these people are fucking clueless when it comes to making keyboards.

Nothing but shit for brains - and the same can be said for their customer service as well as their technical nouse... (where-with-all)

Fucking useless Merkins.

Don't worry, hardly a day goes past when I am able to avoid dealing with dumb cunts in Australia who work in electrical engineering / tech support and don't know how to put batteries in a vibrator.

So they spewed a heap of idiot replies in the comments section and I am all for having issues of factual correctness etc., pointed out to me...

And if your so desperate to call me a fat cunt - so be it - you free to do that too.

But getting bullshit replies that are technically adrift and bear no relation to the actual points I have raised.... Naaaaaaa

Or they rant and accuse me of this or that and generally get most of what they say wrong...

Naaaa - so I am deleting all the comments that come from the retards in Das Keyboard....

Not because they call me a cunt, not because they are actually able to nail me on any technically correct issues, but because they are incoherent bullshit.