I ordered my pocket with the clicky white switches and have found them an utter joy to use over the past week.
However, I’d justified the laptop to myself on the grounds that I would use it for productive hacking while sat on the sofa or in bed rather than just passively reading on my phone or tablet. Nice though they are, the white switches are somewhat at odds with this and I do not think my wife would appreciate the nighttime clacking.
So out with the soldering iron, off with the white switches, and on with some ambient twilight switches (or something).
Yes, I could have ordered it with red switches, but where’s the fun in that…
I’d be interested to know more details about how you went about this. For example, which tool did you use to get all of these unsoldered? With just a soldering iron it’s really frustrating to de-solder these switches I found…
I used a standard soldering iron (a pinecil, to be specific) and plenty of flux. The thing that makes it doable is a good solder sucker. I never imagined it would make that much difference, but I upgraded to an Engineer sucker a couple of years ago after having used cheap generic suckers for decades and the difference is night and day. Pricey, but its sucking performance is absolutely unparalleled.
I received my Pocket Reform today with White switches. I tend to prefer a tactile bump in my keyboards. All my desk keyboards are browns, blues, etc, but my use case is the same as yours - more communal use.
It became strikingly obviously as I was sat in the living room this evening just how loud the whites were. I’m not sure I would be comfortable using this on a train.
The ambient twilight switches look like a great mod, and the ambient sunrise would be perfect if they’re ever released. I might switch out to twilight for now, and grumble to myself about the lack of the bump for the comfort of everyone else.
