For me, one nice thing about working from home all the time now is that I don't have to listen to everyone's annoyingly loud mechanical keyboards. I kinda hope this fad dies before I have to work in an office again...
We have a bunch of old Sun Microsystems mechanical keyboards at the office, and they're not loud. I use a Cherry MX Brown equipped keyboard and it's not loud either.
Does everyone use "Blue" switches over there?
BTW, I don't believe mechanical keyboards are a fad. They're much better than the better rubber dome keyboards. Especially as they age.
Out of curiosity, have you done typing tests? I did once with some keyboards I was comparing. For me there was a difference. At least in the moment. It's possible I was just better on one because it was similar to what I had already been using.
I've used a lot of keyboards in my life. The latest rubber domes I've used are either Microsoft and Logitech. Currently I'm using two keyboards daily, a Microsoft Sculpt (rubber dome) and a Logitech G710+ (Cherry MX Brown).
Logitech is much more consistent, softer, strains my hands less, allows for faster typing.
Rubber dome keyboards become heavier as they age, because their key stems wear down. They become extra heavy when you don't use them for some time, because grease tends to harden as they age. This is not the case with the mechanical switches. They just behave the same, all the time.
On the worst case, a rubber dome keyboard needs so much force and has so much friction that it sprains your hand/fingers (Dell's low end bundled keyboards are an health hazard).
The majority were rubber dome, and all the Sun keyboards I own are, but they made some mechanical type 5’s. They pop up on eBay once in a while. I am not sure the deal with their existence.
I personally use MX Browns at home, but they're not significantly louder than a full size, well used membrane keyboard. Membrane keyboards tend to get noisier as they age and their stems wear down and their lubricants degrade.
On the other hand, there are far more silent mechanical switches available. There are "Silent Brown" switches, "Red" switches without any tactile feedback, or "Silent Red" switches, with even less noise.
If I decide to change my office keyboard one day, I'd buy Red or Silent Brown switches, not because standard Browns are actually annoyingly noisy, but we as people are under stress in the office and get irritated sometimes, and I want to be polite.
As I said before, mechanical keyboards are not about the noise they make primarily, they're much more comfortable to use and they last a long time. Oh, I like the sound of my Browns, but it's just a secondary effect.
There are good mechanical switches that are silent. For example Cherry MX Silent Red. I also have a keyboard with Cherry MX Browns with o-rings to dampen them a little bit.
There is no excuse, other than being totally obnoxious prick, for using a loud keyboard in an open office.
I thought so too, so I brought my 1989 Model M and asked everyone around me if they were okay with it, and that the first complaint I heard about it I would get rid of it.
Slowly after that, people started bringing in all kinds of mechanical keyboards.
If you think that's bad, wait until you hear about these people (sales, customer service, project managers) who actually talk on the phone while in the office.
You'll miss the sound of cherry mx blues in no time.
When i joined my current company, IT asked me what keyboard i wanted, and when i asked for a mechanical one, they told me my manager would need to sign off on that!
It depends on if they're quiet or not. My modded HHKB Pro2 is not any louder than the usual laptop keyboards are.
MX Blue switches should be banned from offices though.
Silent MX Blacks are uncomfortably quiet when you type on them. I find the Zilent 67g to be my favorite switch. It hits all the right check boxes for sound and comfort.
The fact that "no one bats an eye" doesn't mean they're not internally annoyed by the key sounds. In my office, there was this person who used a cheap noisy keyboard. It bothered us, for sure, but we didn't bring it up to his attention.
Yeah, like, I'm not going to ask anyone to use a different keyboard. I'm an adult, I can deal with it.
But I do think mechanical keyboards are way too loud, way overpriced, and way overhyped. (But that's just my opinion. I'm sure people would say the same thing about some of the stupid stuff that I'm into.)
Different keyboards are different, as are workplaces. I would never bring a keyboard with clicky switches to a shared workplace. There are also ways to make mechanical keyboards as silent as a classic office keyboards.
