My favorite keyboard is the Model M. They're big, loud, heavy, and made of equal parts joy and engineering. Typing on one makes the familiar clattering racket that everybody loves.
Lindsey just gave me a new one! My 1988 version (IBM part #1391401) is still fine, of course. But now I can bring one to the lab.
The new keyboard is beautiful; they're making them with USB now, and they come in black! It's not quite as heavy as my 80's vintage keyboard (no big metal plate inside), and while the keys themselves are easily removable, this model doesn't have separate keycaps. But it's just as clicky as you remember, and the feel is perfect. This design is apparently the same as some of the latter-day IBM versions.
The company manufacturing the M now, Unicomp, is great, and they totally deserve your business.
The first keyboard they shipped us actually had some problems with it -- a few of the keys were sticking! So I called up the company and got Jim on the phone almost immediately. He suggested that I pull the offending keys off and then pop them back in place (usually good M maintenance advice). After some fidgeting, we determined that I wasn't going to be able to fix it myself, so he had a replacement sent out the very next day!
So fantastic. And now I have two Ms.
(here's another Unicomp review; the blogger and everybody in the comments over there seems to have had a great customer service experience too.)
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