Another aspect of having a great computer system is the peripherals one chooses. Specifically the mouse and keyboard. I prefer mechanical keyboards to membrane ones. Mechanical keyboards have several benefits over membrane keyboards, they are faster by registering when multiple keys are pressed at the same time (n-key rollover), last longer up to 70 million key presses, and the keys have a more tactile feel. You can also replace keycaps and customize buttons or lighting on most mechanical keyboards. If you are unsure of what type of keyboard you are using right now, its probably a membrane keyboard. Most PC manufacturers do not include mechanical keyboards with their systems since they are more costly.
Probably the greatest keyboard ever made was the IBM M series keyboard M series. This keyboard used a buckling spring design that offered tactile feedback with the side effect of being quite noisy. If you can live with the noise some people love this keyboard and you can still get a clone of it here Unicorp
I like the feel of the M series keyboard but it is a bit noisy for my taste. My favorite keyboard that I own is a Corair K63 which uses cherry red switches. Cherry switches are made in germany and considered the best switches for mechanical keyboards cherry switches. They come in red (light) brown (medium) blue (tactile) black (heavy) and a few other colors and activation force. I love cherry reds, light and fast. The only drawback to the Corsair K63 is that because it has unique media keys it would sometimes cause linux to hang at boot. This was enough of an annoyance for me to look for a new mechanical keyboard that would work well in linux. That led me to the logitech romer-g keyboards. Since Corsair has an exclusive contract with cherry, logitech had no choice but to find another source for their switches. They chose a company called Omron which makes high quality mouse switches Omron switches. The swiches logitech designed with omron puts the led in the center of the switch opposed to the top edge in cherry switches. They also claim 70 millon key presses opposed to cherrys 50 million. After some research i ended up buying a Logitech keyboard with Omron Romer-G swtiches and I must say I have been completely satisfied with the lighting, tactile feedback, and speed of the keys logitech g413. I also like how it has a usb port in the keyboard to plug in a usb stick or other devices.
As a seperate purchase I was looking for a new mouse that would be comfortable and fast with customizable lighting and buttons. I saw a nice no-name chinese gaming mouse on amazon.com and decided to give it a try. Although it wasn't too bad, it felt cheap and didn't fit my hand well causing hand fatigue while using it for extended periods. I decided to keep searching for a better mouse, and ended up finding this one pro mouse
And while it looks simple it has a very fast sensor and programmable buttons and lighting. I made the forward button the windows key, and the resolution button a page down button for faster shortcut keys and web use. The lighting options allow changing colors, intensity, and patterns. Another nice thing about this mouse is that the button and lighting customizations can be saved to internal memory in the mouse, so that you can use it in other OS's or plug into other computers and keep your settings without additional softare needed.
Overall I believe the a mouse and keyboard are the items that you tend to interact with more often than any other part of a PC and it is very important to get the right components. Cheap items tend to be that...cheap. Paying for higher quality components offer more features and tend to last longer which may not make them more expensive in the long run.
