every keyboard sucks

My keyboard is the most important tool I work with. It is only sensible that I choose a keyboard that suits my needs perfectly, and I am willing to spend a considerable amount of money on a decent one - for health reasons alone if not for comfort. So why is it so damn difficult to buy one?

For the longest time now I typed on an excellent Enermax Aurora - it is very well made, flat (which is good for my wrists) and yet has good key resistence and feedback. But one thing always bothered me: it doesn’t have a US key layout but rather some strange mix of US and UK - most notably it has a “large” return key, which displaces the backspace and backslash/pipe keys. I’ve also grown to love the built-in USB hub.

So when I now needed a new keyboard to replace the old, crappy and filthy standard cherry piece of crap at home I naturally wanted to buy the successor: the enermax Acrylux. Unfortunately it is absolutely impossible to buy an Acrylux with en_US layout here in germany - damn!

So I lamented for a while and then ordered the cherry easyhub. It arrived, but the fact that the keys are huge, very close together and worst of all: aren’t beveled make it very difficult to type on, and my rate of error skyrocketed. Also the keys have nothing on the Aurora’s and feel rather flimsy in comparison.

I then ordered a cherry STRAIT… what a piece of crap! It is built to look like the stylish apple keyboards (which I know almost nothing about), but falls short in all other areas: it feels flimsy as hell and lacks feedback on whether you actually pressed a key or not - horrible! Also the insert/delete/home/end/… block is rotated 90 degrees - catastrophic for a vim-lover-yet-insert-lamer like me.

So: does anybody know a flat keyboard with a decent feel to the keys that I can actually buy an american layout version of here in germany? I’d rather have a corded version, and a built-in USB-hub is a bonus. Any pointers?