Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Cherry's New Low-Profile Switches may Help Bring Mechanical Keyboards to More Laptops

posted by martyb on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the shallow-premise dept.

Fnord666 writes:

You may not think much about the switches that sit underneath the keycaps of your keyboard, but there's a large contingent of enthusiasts who really, really care. And for those users, Cherry's various MX-branded switches are somewhat of a standard. Because they include a number of mechanical parts, though, you won't see a lot of laptop-like thin mechanical keyboards or mechanical keyboards on more than a handful of laptops.

The trend, however, is clearly going toward slim keyboards — and that's not lost on Cherry. So at CES this week, the company is introducing a completely new line of keyboard switches that may just be small enough to bring mechanical keyboards to more laptops (or at least more niche gaming laptops) and thinner keyboards. These new switches are low-profile versions of the Cherry MX RGB switch, a switch that features colored LEDs and which is especially popular with gamers. The company tells me that, if successful, it'll launch thinner versions of its other MX switches, too.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/12/cherrys-new-low-profile-switches-may-help-bring-mechanical-keyboards-to-more-laptops/

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Cherry's New Low-Profile Switches may Help Bring Mechanical Keyboards to More Laptops | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 22 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:03PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:03PM (#623226)

    The best keyboard I've ever used was a ENORMOUS 48 function key (two rows of 24) keyboard on an IBM terminal (circa 90's). It was likely a buckling-spring design.

    These were likely custom ordered for the university, as they had at least 8 APL characters per key (the key-caps were covered on every possible corner and side). If the APL language wasn't bad enough, trying to figure out how to get the keyboard to output a specific character was a nightmare.

    My home desktop uses MX blue switches, and though nice and noisy, it still doesn't have as much tactile feedback as I'd like.

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:50PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:50PM (#623312)

    That was nothing special; those were derivatives of the famous Model M keyboard, but used on minicomputers or other non-PC systems. They weren't anything terribly rare; you can easily find them on Ebay today.