deskthority

The nominees in the category Best regular keyboard 2014 are:

Corsair K70 RGB and K95 RGB • The Corsair Gaming K70 and K95 are mechanical gaming keyboards with Cherry MX switches, key-by-key customizable backlighting, and full key matrix anti-ghosting with full key rollover on USB.

Ducky Legend series • The Ducky Legend uses a 5mm thick aluminum case top design for an industrial look that is suitable on your desk for work or gaming. It is powered by an ARM architecture micro-controller, Cherry switches and a dual layer PCB and has various backlighting effects.

Ducky Premier series • The Ducky Premier is an MX keyboard for typing purists. The keycaps are made with durable PBT plastic. The legend is printed with a dye-sumlimation process that dyes the color of the plastic which will never wear out.

Ducky Shine 4 • The Ducky Shine 4 is an ugrade to the Shine series with a modern look. It incorporates MX switches, USB Repeat Acceleration, N-Key Rollover, 1000hz polling and dual color LED backlighting effects.

KFC board • Feast your eyes on KFC Japan's fried chicken keyboard. Surely your hunt for the holy grail of mechanical keyboards is over after acquiring this stylish keyboard.

And the Wingnut for Best regular keyboard 2014, as voted for by the members of deskthority, goes to...

And the winner is ... Yuck!

Nooooooooooooo, not that one. Anything, but that one!

Deskthroity for ping award 2015

Facepalm.

Wait, didn't you say you voted for it, Andrew?

Yes!

LOL...and the 2015 Ping award goes to....DT!!!

i did

o.O that's quite a slap for the other contenders.
The kfc chicken rapists do however not deserve any kind of praise in whichever form it may be.

chzel wrote: ↑LOL...and the 2015 Ping award goes to....DT!!!

This!

Oh no... I think we should suspend the Voter Prize for this category. Seriously...

Muirium wrote: ↑Facepalm.

Chicken facepalm:

I see a lesson to be learnt here....for one, many folks were clearly not blown away by most of the offerings that companies have been rolling out this past year. A general atitude of "keep doing the same thing as before and cash in" is found in the entire business of keyboards with the noteworthy exception of what CM has done with the novatouch. I hope companies will take this as a wakeup call and put more thought into actually advancing keyboards and not leaving the work to the community. Invest in R&D and improve your products, folks!

Hmmm... that makes me wonder if this will win "iPhone Accessory of the Year" on the phone forums:

The ultimate danger of joke entries…

Ascaii wrote: ↑I see a lesson to be learnt here....for one, many folks were clearly not blown away by most of the offerings that companies have been rolling out this past year. A general atitude of "keep doing the same thing as before and cash in" is found in the entire business of keyboards with the noteworthy exception of what CM has done with the novatouch. I hope companies will take this as a wakeup call and put more thought into actually advancing keyboards and not leaving the work to the community. Invest in R&D and improve your products, folks!

I like this angle the most. DT didn't vote for the KFC board because it's funny (or did we? ), we did it to spur on true innovation by giving those slack keyboard companies a wake-up call.

I mainly did it as the others where not very interesting

The whole category seemed a bit suspect to me, honestly. For the longest time I felt alone for actually wanting full-size keyboards (while watching all the aluminium TKL cases come and go). I've since lost interest in full-size, and the public face of the community in general seems to be sufficiently in favour of TKL and smaller that anyone looking for anything worth voting for won't find it here. For people who do just prefer an ordinary keyboard, Corsair's botched attempts to get RGB to work won't do them any favours, nor any of the other hype.

Even the Legend isn't that great. It's got the stupid bunched-up backlit legends, and a far too chunky insult-to-injury case (at least Filco don't make their TKL keyboards much larger than they needs to be). If they wanted to do backlit right, where are the Matias switches?

What exactly should anyone do to win this category? The only advantage of advanced backlighting is that I could set my nice blue/white arrangement that I want.

For me personally, I'm holding out for some proper switches. A resurrected Model M2 would be truly awesome, for example. Even a brand new Filco Zero would have been nice to see, and that never happened (Matias keyboards are far too bloated, and I'd rather have right Windows and menu with full-size: I can bind my own media keys, but I can't wipe Fn off the keyboard).

Honestly, I think it was poor definition of the category, partially, not just how the market is. Look at how much we struggled to come up with alternatives to it, and the high-end keyboard market seems to be focusing on other sizes.

Deskthority for the 2015 Ping award, and maybe make 2015 allow anything currently on sale between 2014-12-01 00:00 and 2015-11-30 24:00 (that's a real time, believe it or not - equivalent to 2015-12-01 00:00, but signifying the previous day) UTC.

I'm sure someone will remember to nominate us for our own coveted Ping award next year. I'd just like to point out for the record that I DIDNAE DAE IT! My vote was for the Ducky Premier, and I tried to rally some support for it, to no avail before the all conquering, deep fat fried joking juggernaut…

Seeing as TKLs are so lively at the moment, I'm definitely all in favour of moving the dividing line between compact and regular keyboards next year, where TKLs would be in this category. Much better balance if we do that.

And Webwit's general idea of retiring some awards so we can include some new ones is smart, too. I'd like a Best Review for instance (of those published on DT of course). And one way to clear that would be to merge struggling categories, or indeed eliminate them as a trial.

We can discuss all this in the buildup to DTA 2015. Or now, I suspect!

Whereas I'm more in favor of moving the dividing line from release to availability, and then I think there'll be no shortage of full-size keyboards for us to vote for.

There's plenty available, and it's a strong market on its own, just a saturated one.

That's definitely doable too. Depends on whether we want to make these prizes about innovation or recommendation.

bhtooefr wrote: ↑Honestly, I think it was poor definition of the category, partially, not just how the market is.

But where's the IBM Model M2 TKL? The Filco Zero was known in the West only in its TKL guise (one or two countries did get a full-size version), but there's no new Zero of any size. The market is focusing too much on gimmicks and not on genuinely improving the baseline nature of the product. Where's Cherry's official ergo clear for that matter? The Germans are a smart bunch — they could get ergo clear working if they cared.

Muirium wrote: ↑ And Webwit's general idea of retiring some awards so we can include some new ones is smart, too.

Hum, hum, so next year he could retire the ... Ping award?*

Everyone seems to love that one the best of all!

My favourite this year was the brand new Best Photo contest. Definitely going to do that again. And I'll be tagging pictures I like all year long with 2015's DTAs in mind.

I am ashamed.

At all joke voters: I hate you, plz die slowly and horribly.

I'd like to suggest a new award: Best Suggestion for a New Award. (...and this suggestion is my entry, of course)

Muirium wrote: ↑My favourite this year was the brand new Best Photo contest. Definitely going to do that again. And I'll be tagging pictures I like all year long with 2015's DTAs in mind.

I'm still annoyed that I couldn't find that picture of yours to nominate. (...you know, that one good photo you took.. )

You wouldn't have won anyway though. HAL's photo was just too cute.

Exactly. There were some fantastic ones, technically and stylistically, but it had the emotion.

Yes! KFC was the most interesting of the finalists.