Keyboards are not a detail!

But the vintage keyboards that savvy users still chase are the ones that have the tactile feedback – the bump as you engage a key – in the right place. Most revered of these is the Model M, shipped with IBM PCs beginning in 1984. It had a unique kind of keyswitch called a “buckling spring switch” that serious tactile-keyboard fans consider the best ever. The Model M is a true classic; like Algol-60 and the 1911-pattern 45ACP, it was an improvement over most of its successors.

(For completeness and to demonstrate that I’m not being cultishly attached to a single brand, I will now mention the Northgate OmniKey, a superb mechanical-switch keyboard made by an otherwise undistinguished PC manufacturer. Nearly as good as the Model M by all accounts, and having used one I don’t laugh at people who think it was better. After Northgate folded in 2005, the keyboards were for a few years sold under the “Avant” trademark. OmniKeys and Avants would command even higher resale prices than Model Ms now, because fewer were made – but good luck finding any at all, their owners are not letting go of them ever.)

Model Ms, on the other hand, are still manufactured today, by an outfit called Unicomp that bought out the factory from Lexmark after Lexmark had bought it from IBM and uses the original tooling and designs. I’m typing on a Unicomp right now. Despite some drawbacks (which I’ll get to) it’s still odds-on the best keyboard design ever shipped.

But Unicomp is struggling and in constant trouble. Doesn’t take much examination of their website and product line to see the outlines; they’re cash-strapped, unable to do a lot of new-product engineering or marketing because the volume of demand for their product is too low. The few changes they have made to the Model M – like bolting on USB support – have been kluged in on the cheap, which created problems that damage the brand. The UB404LA has interoperability problems with some USB chipsets; ours has dropped connection with the hub on my machine once and flakes out every few minutes when connected to my wife’s machine (which is why she’s using the nipple-mouse-equipped UB40PGA that’s actually mine). The buttons for the integrated trackball have never worked reliably.

I just bought one of the Unicomps. I miss those old keyboards. I pound the hell out of a keyboard, and you probably have some idea of the amount of time I spend keyboarding in an average day.

$79 bucks seems like a steal to me for one of these classics that I can hook up to a USB port on any of my machines.