Giving mechanical keyboards a try.

After a couple of months, I decided to get a mechanical keyboard for my home office. The laptop I use at home for media consumption, and some light Internet browsing, has given me some trouble with keys getting stuck since new, so I got an entry level wireless mechanical keyboard to see if all the hype I've heard about them is something I could get into.

So, I decided to go with a Machenike K500-B51W with brown switches. It is a 60% keyboard, and although for a keyboard for a more professional use I'd rather use bigger one with a number pad, for the intended use I've of it has been proven to be quite a nice fit.

The main reasons I choose the K500-B51W are its size, that Machenike has proven to me that it makes good products with the L16A laptop I use as my daily driver, that is relatively cheap, and that it is a wireless keyboard. My first impressions of it, are pretty good. I still need to get used on to it, but so far it has been quite a great experience.

To be honest, I had my reservations about mechanical keyboards. But after listening good thing about them, and now having some first hand experience on one, I must admit that mechanical keyboards have won me over for use on my home and work offices. They are not something that I would bring with me when I'm on the go, but I use them when are the office.

I'd still go for a 90% keyboard with a numpad as my main keyboard for use with my main laptop. I just prefer my keyboards that way, since my user case just works better that way.

I've tried to use smaller keyboards, but I simple dislike them. I can just use them for short times, or in specific use cases. Like using the when browsing YouTube, or other streaming sites, where I don't have much use for the numpad, and the smaller size is a benefit.

Time will tell if I choose to get a bigger keyboard to use with my main laptop at work, so far it seems that there are some high chances I will do just that.

Thunderbird email client arrives on Android as a beta tester app.

I've been an avid user of Mozilla Thunderbird email client on my laptops, for about a decade now. Specially after I started using several emails, which make managing them through a webmail impractical.

A few years ago I started to check my emails though my smartphone more often, and the email apps I settled on while usable didn't actually measured with I came to expect using Thunderbird. I knew that team behind Thunderbird was on their way to create an app for iOS and Android, but it was a work on progress.

Until this week, when the app was release as a beta for testers on the Play Store. After digging around a bit, I found that it was stable enough to give a try. So far, it has been quite a great app for me. It just works, while there are some features missing.

The main one I'm looking forward, is being able to sync it with my desktop app. I do that with Firefox, and find it useful for my user case. Being able to both apps seamlessly is quite useful for me, since I can use the device I have at hand.

Being able to have a more granular controls on how to theme the smartphone app, is something I don't need to have, but it would be nice to have.

While I still have to use the app for more time to better understand it, and how it fits my needs, so far it has been the best email client I've used on an smartphone. With new updates, I hope it keeps making it better and it becomes my go to email client app on Android.