You might first check the one you have, as working Revision Fs are not that much better than working earlier revisions, to be perfectly honest. Revision Fs simply have an F on the part number sticker underneath. You can't miss it.
The three good Duo keyboards I have (a revision D, E and F as I recall) improved a good deal with use, and softened up, basically, after I had typed away on them for a while. It maybe took a couple of hours. While none of them to this day are what you would call a pleasure to use, they do the business. I recently wrote 50-60pp. of closely spaced text on a 270c with the D keyboard.
I started writing on manual typewriters in the late 70s and early 80s, and the Duo keyboards, to my mind, resemble such a typewriter in action, in the sense that they require a purposeful strike rather than a caress to function. Those who have written pages and pages on good quality manual typewriters would not find a working Duo keyboard to be terribly alien.
The current crop of Apple keyboards, which a person could almost write on by farting at or in their general direction from across a room, are another matter altogether. I make about the same number of mistakes at work on my 2008 iMac keyboard (because it is so sensitive) as I do on a Duo.
All of this is fresh in my head: I was writing something briefly on my 2300c with Revision F a mere 5 mins before reading your post, and thinking that one of its limitations is not the keyboard action so much, which I have learned to live with, as the fact that the keyboard action makes mistakes every three lines or so more or less inevitable.
The three good Duo keyboards I have (a revision D, E and F as I recall) improved a good deal with use, and softened up, basically, after I had typed away on them for a while. It maybe took a couple of hours. While none of them to this day are what you would call a pleasure to use, they do the business. I recently wrote 50-60pp. of closely spaced text on a 270c with the D keyboard.
I started writing on manual typewriters in the late 70s and early 80s, and the Duo keyboards, to my mind, resemble such a typewriter in action, in the sense that they require a purposeful strike rather than a caress to function. Those who have written pages and pages on good quality manual typewriters would not find a working Duo keyboard to be terribly alien.
The current crop of Apple keyboards, which a person could almost write on by farting at or in their general direction from across a room, are another matter altogether. I make about the same number of mistakes at work on my 2008 iMac keyboard (because it is so sensitive) as I do on a Duo.
All of this is fresh in my head: I was writing something briefly on my 2300c with Revision F a mere 5 mins before reading your post, and thinking that one of its limitations is not the keyboard action so much, which I have learned to live with, as the fact that the keyboard action makes mistakes every three lines or so more or less inevitable.