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So I am kind of happy with my Das 4, overall. Except, my OCD was not entirely satisfied with it. I think I am losing it a bit, but wtf, I spend enough time typing and staring at the keyboard. So a bit more rambling on an entirely self-absorbed topic, to distract myself from all kinds of terribleness.
For some reason I was obsessing over the keycaps - a little slippery and visually unsatisfying. A minor detail, you say (and I would have said a couple of years ago). But I found myself stopping work and looking through Amazon and EBay listings for keycaps. What I was looking for is a slightly grainy surface, and an off-white, yellowish color with a large Teletypey font.
After a week of catching myself wasting time I bought $27.00 YMDK Carbon keycaps on Amazon, and installed alpha-only (plus one row of right pinky keys, .;[ but not ]'/, because it looked bad and unbalanced). I did not bother with any other keys, as _that_ did the trick, and I am visually happy: I have a sub-minimal light keyset with the rest of the keyboard visually disappearing.
The orange 'enter' and 'esc' were a curiosity, but I found them too distracting and kept the stock keys for all the rest.
I am not too crazy about the cheap keycaps, but they feel better than stock, and look almost good enough, except for the fucking 'M' which is an upside down 'W'.
So these brown switches are supposed to be tactile, but it certainly does not feel like it. The only feedback I feel in my fingers is a pretty satisfying clank of bottoming out the keys - which offer a little more resistance than I am used to. So they are still more noisy than tactile.
So I find myself still coveting a buckling spring keyboard. You can still get old IBM Model M's, and they are pretty much indestructible and noisy as all hell. It would probably be a mistake, as my partner tells me everyone can hear me typing behind closed doors, but on the other hand, if that's the case with a crappy 'silent' keyboard, I may as well bang on a real one...
Anyway, my hands feel a little better, my OCD is slightly improved, and I am no longer wasting time looking up keyboard stuff. Well, just a little.
Work is more satisfying - it feels like driving a BMW as opposed to a Ford - a more satisfying sound, the stiffness of the switches, the heavy metal plate weighing on my lap (where my keyboard goes).
Now I have fewer excuses for procrastinating. Hah.