Holy crap this thing is tiny.
Also loud (there was an Amazon review that claims the keyswitch activation force was somewhere between MX Blues ans Green, despite ostensibly being an MX blue clone) Need to get some o-Rings,
Another one for the statistics. Razer isn't recommended in enthusiast circles for a reason.
I bought it before I would have really considered myself an enthusiast. At that point in time, all I really knew was that I preferred the clicky keys over non-clicky and don't really like linear switches. More, importantly, Frys pretty much only carries the major brands which is exactly the opposite of the best keyboards (mechanical or not)
The Magicforce is a pretty popular board, actually. Pretty good quality for the price. Though I would've advised you to invest another 30 bucks to get Gateron Blue switches over the Outemu blues.
Good to know. As I said, the reviews seemed pretty good, the negative reviews were standard junk, and most review were positive. Gateron switches would have been nice, but as I mentioned before, I was looking for something with same day delivery which severely limited my options.
Because standard bottom row. Three 1.25u keys on the left, 6.25u spacebar, four 1.25 keys on the right. This is the layout that is dictated by the ANSI and ISO standard layout specifications, so most boards use it and all keycap sets support it. You can decide to not use standard cap sizes, but that means that aftermarket sets are less likely to fit your board.
case in point, this keyboard doesn't have standard sized keys on the bottom row. Anyways, the way I see it, there's still a couple options whther it's reusing capslock as Fn or using the windows key and making the original function and Fn command. Those are, after all, the most changed/disabled keys, so it's a good use.
Hm, integrated USB hub is hard to get with boards that are both smaller than 100% and have floating keys. I think your best bet is to post in the "What keyboard should I buy?"-thread on
/r/mechanicalkeyboards, maybe someone knows a board like this. You might have to look into doing a custom build or at least a mod of an existing board.
Indeed. USB hubs/passthroughs aren't exactly common even on generic fullsized keyboards, which i a shame, since they can be rather useful. For me I like them since my mouse is wireless so having the receiver right next to the mouse minimizes interference and gives me the best signal quality, something I can't get from the USB ports on the back of my PC. I also have a wireless module for my Wacom tablet.
A keyboard I've been eyeing for a while is the DSX that comes up on Massdrop from time to time, but I just never seem pull the trigger on it. It's not exactly cheap (and most drops aren't actually significantly discounted from what you can buy from Amazon or other large volume stores, though this is only available through massdrop as far as I can tell), and, as is seemingly the Massdrop norm, takes forever to ship.
I've dreamed of making my own, custom keyboard, but haven't found the time to fully research things, let alone build it, and I definitely would rather make a custom PCB rather than manually soldering dozens of wires even if it is more expensive and requires more, proper engineering which makes it even more of an undertaking,