Siggy’s Rants

Yeah, yeah. I know I promised a review of a printer I had recently bought, but I’ve been busy. Keyboards are easier to review, anyway! Up today is the Cherry G84-4100.

This little mechanical key switch keyboard is very interesting in case because of its extremely small form factor. To put it in perspective, it has a length almost exactly that of a standard letter sized piece of paper and just over half the width.

Here are some statistics from the official website.

	-	Uses mechanical keys from our ML series with high-precision key action; small physical dimensions: Keycaps arranged in 18 mm grid, Exceptionally space-efficient, Lightweight, LED indicators for Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock
	-	Reliability: MTBF: 170,000 hours
	-	Individual keys have long service life: 20 million key operations

They aren’t kidding when they say lightweight and exceptionally space-efficient. Anyway, on to the pictures!

This is definately a no-nonsense keyboard, here. It lacks the multimedia buttons that plague most current non-professional keyboards and has only the bare essentials. The keys are extremely uniformly spaced and not a single inch is spared. Even the LED indicators aren’t given any extra room up top. So much space has been saved that F11 and F12 share their position with F1 and F2 and the numpad has been moved to the position most laptops use. I don’t use the numpad too often, so the function key will likely never be used except for those rare occasions where F11 and F12 have to be used.

The keyboard itself is made in the Czech Republic and conforms to all major standards. No real surprise. You can see that the keyboard itself is a relatively low draw device at 100mA, as well.

Again, very little space has been wasted in this keyboard’s design. At the bottom, there’s only barely enough room for the screw holes and at the top there’s a tiny bit wasted because of the space the LED indicators take up. The internals aren’t really that exciting, but who usually opens their keyboards anyway?

On the back, you can see the individual solider joints for the mechanical switches. Overall, the PCB is very professionally made without wires strewn everywhere. No sloppy joints and very solidly built. Of course, Cherry’s logo graces even the internals as can be seen on the bottom of the PCB.

And finally, to the thing that makes this keyboard so special. The individual mechanical keys use Cherry’s black stemmed linear switches. Rated at 20 million depressions each, they’re built to last. The linear switches have no snap to them and are relatively quiet. When depressed, the switch is uniform all the way until they bottom out, giving no indicator of when they’ve actually actuated.

Because of the limited space, the actual stroke distance is kept low, so it doesn’t take much to depress each key. Personally, I like it just because it doesn’t take a heavy touch to activate each key and, once trained over a period, I’ve been able to type without bottoming out the keys. There is a bit of a learning curve, however. Coming from a full sized keyboard, my hands have been constantly misaligned, despite the raised F and J keys to help touch typists. It doesn’t take long to get used to, however. After only a few days, I’ve regained most of my typing speed and have actually improved slightly.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the Cherry G84-4100, despite its rather boring name. Elegant, compact and, most of all, designed with reliability in mind. Its compact size has won me over and it’s saved me quite a bit of desk space!

I found a nice item on eBay very recently. It’s a Dell keyboard sporting mechanical key switches instead of the traditional rubber dome crap. I couldn’t really dig up a lot of information on the keyboard itself, but I can say that it’s a pleasure to type on. Not as stiff as my Model M, but not as light as a typical keyboard. The feedback I get is very satisfying.

Time to stop talking and post some pictures!

Front and back. Nothing really special here. This is after I’ve cleaned it up a bit. A little bit of alcohol and a cotton swab works great for this.

Notice the channel for the cable so you’re not screwed on cable length no matter which side your computer is on. It may be hard to see, but a lot of the letters have been worn and are faded. Everything except function keys and special punctuation have suffered this fate. Time to crack this baby open!

Nothing really special looking here, though you can tell that the internals take up a LOT less space than what the external casing would imply. I’m thinking of modding this little baby into something that saves quite a bit of space…

Let’s get a closeup of one of the switches, shall we?

As you can see, each key is given its very own little mechanical switch. Very novel and very tactile.

And a closeup of the label on the back.

The P/N and S/N are indeed blank. No trick of the camera there.

Well, there you have it! Overall, it’s a very tactile keyboard, though not as clicky as a Model M. It’s a pleasure to type on and it still feels like it has many years left in it.

Yeah. So I’ve been extremely busy and lazy at the same time. About two months ago, I moved into an apartment with a buddy of mine and it’s just been work work work most of the time. On my days off, I lounge around and do nothing because of everything. One of the reasons I’m posting this is because my inbox has been filled with WordPress being retarded because it can’t send emails correctly.

Regardless, I think it’s about time for a new review. I just recently bought a brand new Canon CX6000 AIO printer. Unfortunately, I’m off to work here in about thirty minutes, so I’ll get some pictures posted when I get off as well as some sample scans and prints. Regardless, I’m back!