Wow, that’s almost as expensive as the Dygma Raise, but for a more basic, non-split board…
wait. It has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 hub. With two Type C ports for plugging devices in, i.e. not counting the port for the computer. That definitely makes it much more valuable than expected, as true USB-C hubs (as in, not just C-to-many-A, but to-many-C) are still super rare.
C-to-many-C won’t give you enough current. Since it’s shared with your keyboard, you don’t even want to jam the signal with any high throughput stuff. So it’s practically useless, especially on a keyboard.
Your claims sound bogus to me but I have nothing concrete to dispute them. But I do use my keyboard+mouse through a USB hub and never noticed any issues even when reading data full speed from a USB SSD on the same hub.
The maximum is still 900 mA going down. SSDs typically use less power than HDDs. My HDD draws near 900 mA, and it doesn’t work well with anything else on a same hub.
From a naive search on internet, USB-C seems to be capable of quite enough to handle high throughput stuff:
USB 3.2, released in September 2017, replaces the USB 3.1 standard. It preserves existing USB 3.1 SuperSpeed and SuperSpeed+ data modes and introduces two new SuperSpeed+ transfer modes over the USB-C connector using two-lane operation, with data rates of 10 and 20 Gbit/s (1 and ~2.4 GB/s).
I’m not sure what you mean by jamming the signal as even with keyboard + mouse + external SSD + 1G Ethernet cable, we’d be far from 10Gbps possible with 1 single USB-C cable.
Note that the Vortex Race3 does seem to be a very similar keyboard, with a low profile milled aluminum case, RGB backlighting, Semi-ergo 75% layout and DSA profile caps (similar to XDA).
It comes with Cherry MX switches though. I’m wondering if part of the cost increase (besides the USB hub) are those hotswap switch sockets with box switches. I’m not sure from a reliability standpoint if that’s even preferable to MX switches.
I think the only big differentiating factor to most people is that USB hub.
Would you pay double to price to get that though?
It’s all about the price to essential features ratio. A Ford Fiesta drives very well and a Volkswagen Polo is much more expensive and … ehm … drives, too.
I don’t work for, nor am I in any way affiliated with System76. I’m sharing this, because the hardware and software is open source, it a beautiful mechanical keyboard, and I thought there would be interest here.
A spot on the Lobsters front page is worth a lot of money.
By posting product pages, we’re reinforcing to marketers/growth hackers “hey, come peddle your wares over here!”, and further we’re normalizing discussion of what are ultimately consumer product choices.
Neither of these has good long-term effects on the community.
This way, any service that has a paid plan couldn’t be mentioned here. I think this is a valuable information, because it’s about open source hardware.
A product which can only be bought is different than something which has also a paid plan. This is product placement directly to their target audience and not many people seem to care, while at the same time running all sorts of adblockers
I’m one of those Moonlander boosters. Using it right now!
But I do have a caveat: I had to relearn how to type on the ortholinear layout. My typing speed plummeted at first. I had never learned touch typing and was apparently “crossing over” for a bunch of keys like “y” and “6”. Now I’m faster than I was before and back into to realm of “think about the words” rather than “think about the fingers”.
Would love to see a direct comparison between the moonlander and Ergodox EZ. I have a (self built) Ergodox and I’m a big fan. But I wish I could have one that is just a tad smaller with keys being a bit closer to each other.
I saw this comparison video on YouTube (15 minutes, but indexed so you can skip to parts you are interested in) a few days ago and found it helpful. A friend of mine got the Moonlander and I have an Ergodox, so I hope to compare them for myself in the near future. I have loved my Ergodox and actually don’t find that the thumb clusters cause any trouble for me, so I doubt I will get a Moonlander anytime soon. I do envy the foldable wrist rests though. The ones for the Ergodox could pull double-duty as wheel chocks for a passenger plane and tend to wander away through a day of use.
They talk about it somewhere in the docs. The idea is that you can remap one of the half-bars to another key if you’d like, so you can backspace with your thumb, for example, but still also have space on your thumb.
Like many design features in conventional keyboards, (especially the staggered rows or the ergonomically awful positioning of modifier keys) the reason most spacebars are comically wide is that they were just copying the design of typewriters without considering the original rationale. In a typewriter, the space bar is different from every other key because it doesn’t have an arm attached to it that needs to come up to strike the paper, so it could be placed lower down where the arms wouldn’t reach and out of the way of the other moving parts.
Split spacebars are pretty popular in the mechanical keyboard enthusiast community, for aesthetic as well as practical reasons (can map more functionality to more switches, like layer switching for instance).
With a tenkeyless (TKL) layout, your mouse is only a short hand movement away.
^ or just mouse with your left hand (actually not that hard for right-handers, if you give it a try for a short while). The lack of numpad is a showstopper for me, but I’ll be watching out for any developments, if they offer a with-numpad version in the future.
Also: The compact layout kind of turns me off. I fear that my muscle memory would conflict too often. (I dislike laptop keyboards for this reason.)
Agreed — I need a numpad for real work, not for numbers but as a dozen or so macro keys. Most vitally, I map the top row to undo, cut, copy, paste so I can whack those with the right hand while mousing with the left.
This is objectively the best keyboard layout for all people who are exactly like me. When will the industry learn?!
I used to have strong pro-tenkey opinions, and have found myself converted to using a separate tenkey (or macro pad as you describe). Yes, it’s one more thing, and it also offers more flexibility. It’s an acceptable trade off in my mind.
If you like what ya got and don’t want to change that’s a-ok too. I wanted to give voice to an alternative at least.
Nice to meet someone who works similarly to me! We seem rare. I have my numpad mapped to [KDE] desktops, giving me one-key access to numerous windows. Your practice of mapping the clipboard functions to the numpad is interesting. I guess I haven’t run into that because I use the Dvorak layout, where Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are manageable with the right hand.
Decently priced for what you get. I love that they use the Khalil Box Switches, they are incredible. A few more options might not hurt though. The key cap colors are really not for me for example.
I like them a bit more, and I could see how they could be Objectively Better, but I don’t think I’ve seen it seriously studied. My understanding is that staggered keyboards are a byproduct of typewriters that couldn’t have vertically aligned keys, and since we don’t have that constraint then it’s reasonable to design around it.
I have an Ergodox that I enjoy a bunch, I can’t recommend it enough.
I’m not getting paid or rewarded by anyone to share it. It came across my Mastodon feed, I read up on it, thought it was neat, and checked to see if it was shared here. Seeing that it wasn’t, knowing that it’s open hardware and software, highly customizable, and a mechanical keyboard, I thought there would be of interest here.
But I’m not getting any reward from sharing it, aside from magic Lobste.rs points, and that’s the entirety of it.
If you were writing a review of one (eg. you purchased it and used it and had a writeup of your feels about it), I think folks would find it a bit more palatable and interesting that just a direct link to a product.
Maybe a silly question, but is it possible to find mechanical keyboards that other people are happy to work around? Working from home has meant there’s less appetite for keyboard noise.
Wow, that’s almost as expensive as the Dygma Raise, but for a more basic, non-split board…
wait. It has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 hub. With two Type C ports for plugging devices in, i.e. not counting the port for the computer. That definitely makes it much more valuable than expected, as true USB-C hubs (as in, not just C-to-many-A, but to-many-C) are still super rare.
I don’t get it. Wouldn’t it be better to use an external hub, so you can upgrade it when the USB standard will change again?
C-to-many-C won’t give you enough current. Since it’s shared with your keyboard, you don’t even want to jam the signal with any high throughput stuff. So it’s practically useless, especially on a keyboard.
Your claims sound bogus to me but I have nothing concrete to dispute them. But I do use my keyboard+mouse through a USB hub and never noticed any issues even when reading data full speed from a USB SSD on the same hub.
The maximum is still 900 mA going down. SSDs typically use less power than HDDs. My HDD draws near 900 mA, and it doesn’t work well with anything else on a same hub.
From a naive search on internet, USB-C seems to be capable of quite enough to handle high throughput stuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C
I’m not sure what you mean by jamming the signal as even with keyboard + mouse + external SSD + 1G Ethernet cable, we’d be far from 10Gbps possible with 1 single USB-C cable.
Nice and open source.
While I am not personally interested because I like my keyboards full sized, I really do want to see more OSHW keyboards made to run QMK firmware.
Looks very good but too expensive in my opinion. The Vortex Race3 is also programmable with good keys and cost half of it.
Yes, but,
Note that the Vortex Race3 does seem to be a very similar keyboard, with a low profile milled aluminum case, RGB backlighting, Semi-ergo 75% layout and DSA profile caps (similar to XDA). It comes with Cherry MX switches though. I’m wondering if part of the cost increase (besides the USB hub) are those hotswap switch sockets with box switches. I’m not sure from a reliability standpoint if that’s even preferable to MX switches. I think the only big differentiating factor to most people is that USB hub. Would you pay double to price to get that though?
It’s all about the price to essential features ratio. A Ford Fiesta drives very well and a Volkswagen Polo is much more expensive and … ehm … drives, too.
How is this not an advertisement?
I don’t work for, nor am I in any way affiliated with System76. I’m sharing this, because the hardware and software is open source, it a beautiful mechanical keyboard, and I thought there would be interest here.
So, you’re advertising for them for free.
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
The blunter way of putting it.
A spot on the Lobsters front page is worth a lot of money.
By posting product pages, we’re reinforcing to marketers/growth hackers “hey, come peddle your wares over here!”, and further we’re normalizing discussion of what are ultimately consumer product choices.
Neither of these has good long-term effects on the community.
Sounds good. Thanks.
No problem!
(Sorry if I came across a little short…it seems like an uptick for me, and I’ve been trying to fight this for years now.)
This way, any service that has a paid plan couldn’t be mentioned here. I think this is a valuable information, because it’s about open source hardware.
A product which can only be bought is different than something which has also a paid plan. This is product placement directly to their target audience and not many people seem to care, while at the same time running all sorts of adblockers
It is but people can’t seem to be able to admit that they too are prone of advertising products.
I think this is why we will never have any way to flag them as such, just flag as “spam” and move on.
Looks really nice, clicks the right buttons… But sadly I need a split keyboard for health reasons ;-(
May be someone could make a fork :D
I highly recommend gboards.ca for split keyboards, but I’ve also heard people say good things about the Moonlander (from the ErgoDox EZ folks).
I’m one of those Moonlander boosters. Using it right now!
But I do have a caveat: I had to relearn how to type on the ortholinear layout. My typing speed plummeted at first. I had never learned touch typing and was apparently “crossing over” for a bunch of keys like “y” and “6”. Now I’m faster than I was before and back into to realm of “think about the words” rather than “think about the fingers”.
The moonlander is easily my favorite keyboard. I just bought a second one for my work desk.
Would love to see a direct comparison between the moonlander and Ergodox EZ. I have a (self built) Ergodox and I’m a big fan. But I wish I could have one that is just a tad smaller with keys being a bit closer to each other.
I saw this comparison video on YouTube (15 minutes, but indexed so you can skip to parts you are interested in) a few days ago and found it helpful. A friend of mine got the Moonlander and I have an Ergodox, so I hope to compare them for myself in the near future. I have loved my Ergodox and actually don’t find that the thumb clusters cause any trouble for me, so I doubt I will get a Moonlander anytime soon. I do envy the foldable wrist rests though. The ones for the Ergodox could pull double-duty as wheel chocks for a passenger plane and tend to wander away through a day of use.
I wonder, what’s the reason for splitting the space bar in two?
They talk about it somewhere in the docs. The idea is that you can remap one of the half-bars to another key if you’d like, so you can backspace with your thumb, for example, but still also have space on your thumb.
Probably because it doesn’t require stabilizers then…
Like many design features in conventional keyboards, (especially the staggered rows or the ergonomically awful positioning of modifier keys) the reason most spacebars are comically wide is that they were just copying the design of typewriters without considering the original rationale. In a typewriter, the space bar is different from every other key because it doesn’t have an arm attached to it that needs to come up to strike the paper, so it could be placed lower down where the arms wouldn’t reach and out of the way of the other moving parts.
Split spacebars are pretty popular in the mechanical keyboard enthusiast community, for aesthetic as well as practical reasons (can map more functionality to more switches, like layer switching for instance).
The idea is you can optionally remap one of them to a modifier key (eg: Fn/ctrl/alt/shift) or use it activate a custom layer.
It gives a more positive/reliable response, the spacebar has long been a weak point on IBM and the more modern pckeyboards.com
I applaud the effort, but
^ or just mouse with your left hand (actually not that hard for right-handers, if you give it a try for a short while). The lack of numpad is a showstopper for me, but I’ll be watching out for any developments, if they offer a with-numpad version in the future.
Also: The compact layout kind of turns me off. I fear that my muscle memory would conflict too often. (I dislike laptop keyboards for this reason.)
Agreed — I need a numpad for real work, not for numbers but as a dozen or so macro keys. Most vitally, I map the top row to undo, cut, copy, paste so I can whack those with the right hand while mousing with the left.
This is objectively the best keyboard layout for all people who are exactly like me. When will the industry learn?!
I used to have strong pro-tenkey opinions, and have found myself converted to using a separate tenkey (or macro pad as you describe). Yes, it’s one more thing, and it also offers more flexibility. It’s an acceptable trade off in my mind.
If you like what ya got and don’t want to change that’s a-ok too. I wanted to give voice to an alternative at least.
Nice to meet someone who works similarly to me! We seem rare. I have my numpad mapped to [KDE] desktops, giving me one-key access to numerous windows. Your practice of mapping the clipboard functions to the numpad is interesting. I guess I haven’t run into that because I use the Dvorak layout, where Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are manageable with the right hand.
Sounds like @snej needs a Sun Type 5. Props key to you!
There is no reason the numeric block isn’t on the left side of the keyboard, save for adhering to tradition at any cost.
Or use a keyboard that is also a mouse.
I’m buying one if only because it’s made in Colorado, but it does look like a decent keyboard.
Decently priced for what you get. I love that they use the Khalil Box Switches, they are incredible. A few more options might not hurt though. The key cap colors are really not for me for example.
Cool! I’d love an ortholinear board, but that’s okay. I’m happy to see them making cool stuff.
interesting, are ortholinear keyboards better to type with?
Ostensibly, yes. Ortholinear = less lateral finger movement = good, because lateral finger movement is bad.
I like them a bit more, and I could see how they could be Objectively Better, but I don’t think I’ve seen it seriously studied. My understanding is that staggered keyboards are a byproduct of typewriters that couldn’t have vertically aligned keys, and since we don’t have that constraint then it’s reasonable to design around it.
I have an Ergodox that I enjoy a bunch, I can’t recommend it enough.
I pre-ordered this one: https://shop.mntmn.com/products/mnt-reform-usb-keyboard-standalone which seems to have quite a few similar ideas…
Wow, that translucent one is awfully tempting. I’ve been eyeing the laptop specifically for the keyboard and trackball combo.
Great to see this keyboard option with up-to-date hardware added to the market!
Flagged, consumer product advertising.
I’m not getting paid or rewarded by anyone to share it. It came across my Mastodon feed, I read up on it, thought it was neat, and checked to see if it was shared here. Seeing that it wasn’t, knowing that it’s open hardware and software, highly customizable, and a mechanical keyboard, I thought there would be of interest here.
But I’m not getting any reward from sharing it, aside from magic Lobste.rs points, and that’s the entirety of it.
If you were writing a review of one (eg. you purchased it and used it and had a writeup of your feels about it), I think folks would find it a bit more palatable and interesting that just a direct link to a product.
Fair enough.
It’s certainly not a big deal though, by any means.
Have a good weekend!
Super happy with System 76 laptops. I’m interested in checking this one out.
Maybe a silly question, but is it possible to find mechanical keyboards that other people are happy to work around? Working from home has meant there’s less appetite for keyboard noise.
This must be definable as advertisement, right?
… and they fucked up the layout … again.
When companies will understand that these two are the best?
Good layout is far more important the being mechanics/hybrid/membrane type …
When will people like you understand that opinions are not absolute truths? If I tell you, that, in my opinion, this is the best layout: https://massdrop-s3.imgix.net/img_comment%2FBpEZDmEkSgW4WBcowJEt_layout_1.jpg am I wrong? Or is that just yet another opinion?