I received my new keyboard today. I went with the System76 Launch Heavy model and went with the silent brown keys. I placed the order on July 23 so it took seven days total/five business days to assemble the keyboard, ship it, and for it to get from Colorado to Southern Ontario. Not bad i'd say. I liked how System76 called and emailed before finalizing the order. They put a code with the charge that shows on my credit card and I had to provide that to finalize things. It's a good security measure as a person would have to have access to your credit card login as well as the card in order to use it.

The keyboard was $334 USD plus $101.38 USD for shipping. That came out to about $672 CAD. Add on another $78.93 at the border for the government to take it's pound of flesh and the total was about $750.93 CAD. The shipping time was good but a tad expensive. I shipped a whole assembled desktop all the way to Nunavut in the same amount of time for $161 so you think the size difference between a keyboard and a desktop would have wararnted a bigger difference in price.

Many would balk at spending so much on a keyboard but I like the fact that the firmware and drivers are FOSS. I like that I got a choice of what kind of switches are used. I liked that I got a choice of what size of keyboard was used. I liked that it was assembled in somewhere more local than China.

The software for it is also FOSS and there is an App Image for it for those that don't use PopOS. You can customize a ton. You can customize the keys on four layers. You can also customize the backlighting with a range of solid colors or a pattern. You can update the firmware through Gnome Firmware which is itself a FOSS program.

The box came with the keyboard, quick guide, a typce c to USB-A cable, a type C to type cable, a bunch of extra keys and a tool to remove them. The extra keys are for if you want to customize certain keys the color of various keys on the keyboard. Say switch from white, to red, blue, etc.

My only real complaint so far is that they didn't pack the box for the keyboard in another box. As it was the seal for the shipping documents was taped onto it and didn't fully come off. That's pretty minor. I would have loved a wrist guard for the bottom of the keyboard but that's not a deal breaker. Quality wise I am liking typing on it so far. I have to get used to the size though, my old Corsair K70 was larger. Overall for $750 CAD I am happy so far.

#system76 #fosshardware #qmkfirmware #linux #fwupd

@publiclewdness $334 is super expensive for a keyboard when you could get a much better one for cheaper with Wooting. I hope the FOSS is that worth it.