Saying Goodbye.

Every era comes to and end. Sometimes it ends in sadness and sometimes its a celebration. Thankfully this is a celebration of a small product I bought back in 2018 that served me well for seven years. In 2018 I needed a new keyboard. My old Razor keyboard had a failing power cable. In order to stop the power from failing I had to hold it on my lap. If it moved even slightly the keyboard would lose power. This Razer keyboard was hard to let go of in 2018. It was the first gaming specific keyboard I had owned. I bought it shortly after my first paycheque at a summer job in 2011. Before that I used some off brand membrane keyboard that I bought for 9.99$

In 2018 I had to let go and say goodbye. Between the failing cable and a faulty delete key I wanted something similar in build style that was within my budget. In 2018 I was completely broke. I was a Twitch affiliate with a few hundred YouTube subscribers and a part time job two days a week. I did a little fund raising stream to replace the keyboard and then went shopping. I selected the Coolermaster Master-keys on amazon. I went with it because it had a similar build size and style as the old Razer. The other reason I went with decided this keyboard; it had a detachable cable. This was a big deal because I was sour about the failing Razer.

As time went on I eventually replaced some key-caps with the novelty Twitch key-caps that I was given during Twitch Con in Las Vegas. I'd say I loved this keyboard. It had brown switches. You see, the Razer keyboard I owned before had blue switches. Back then I lived with my new ex-partner. She worked afternoons and I worked nights. She was often still fast asleep when I'd get home. The blue switches were super loud and would sometimes wake her up when I turned the computer on in the morning. Before buying the keyboard I went to BestBuy and tested every gaming keyboard they had in stock. I found that the brown switches was a nice middle ground between clickey and volume.

Since then, Tons of new styles of switches have arrived on the market. Because of this everyone has a favorite. Yet, I'm not much of a keyboard guy outside of necessity for using a computer. I tend to use them until they fail. Sadly, Its this time it is the Coolermaster Master-keys. The space bar was failing. The last blog post I wrote for this blog was completed on my laptop because of this. Some of the switches got loose as well and would fail periodically. It was time to say good-bye.

Enter a new challenger. I decided to buy this Cherry KC 200 MX Mechanical Office Keyboard.

I don't like most gaming keyboards. They are covered with needless bells and whistles and unwanted middleware. I wanted something affordable and ideally under $100, it needed to be minimal on the LEDs with only plug and play functions. As mentioned above I wanted something familiar. Ideally including brown switches. After some shopping I found my ideal replacement. Don't worry, that is not an affiliate link or anything silly.

I was quite happy with the paper packaging. I remember my last two keyboards arriving coated in Styrofoam and bubble wrap. The keyboards feel is lovely. They have changed the feel of the brown switches since I bought the last keyboard. This one has a really satisfying click. It is low enough in the volume so it does not pick up on my mic while streaming. It also maintains the feeling of the last one. I'm a big fan of the included calculator shortcut on the num-pad. It feels really well built. The brown back plate is metal and I can tell it will be a breeze to keep clean. The last ones plastic enclosure made cleaning it a painstaking chore. I ended up tossing it in the dishwasher and waiting for 48 hours for it to dry. Just too keep it clean. This Cheery keyboard will likely just need a qtip and a can of air. I'm also a big fan of the colour. I personally think the brown really fits the globe lightbulbs. With LED's that mimic halogen lights.

Overall I'm really happy with this no bells and whistles keyboard. I'm hopeful it will last me another seven years or longer.

For the foreseeable future I'm going to be streaming Tuesday-Friday. However I'm going to try and keep the streams around 8 hours. This is to combat the burnout that I mentioned last week. I also need some extra hours at the end of the day to finish Severance..