The very notion of “subscribe to a mouse” is the height of absurdity. This ought to convince anyone who didn’t already think subscriptions were getting out of hand.
Indeed. This would be similar to some governments’ beginning to replace the gas tax with a “miles driven” tax.
That at least makes some sense, since electric vehicle owners don’t pay the gas taxes that are used to maintain the public roads they use.
Mouse and keyboard manufacturers aren’t obligated to maintain the desks where their devices are used.
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Remember the old rolled plate steel keyboards? You could probably destroy a desk with one of those if you wanted to. 
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I’m not sure what those are. Do you mean the heavy classic IBM PC keyboards? Or something else?
Yeah. Those huge ones with the coiled cable that had the huge DIN connector. Some of the outer cases on the oldest ones were thick metal, and they were crazy heavy.
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They were dual-purpose devices that served both as computer input peripherals and as self-defense weapons.
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In the early days of the 21th century I had about 30 people banging on keyboards like that just outside my office door. Some people said it sounded like a hail storm to them when we talked on the phone.
I can see that. I know that some people commented that my original full-height MFM hard drive sounded roughly like a jet engine firing up when we were on the phone. 
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I’m now on my third Logitech B100 mouse. They don’t last forever. But at about $10 to buy, I can’t imagine a subscription for it.
Now I’m still using my Northgate OmniKey/102 keyboard (yes it has a rolled steel plate on the bottom). At 35 years and an original $100 purchase price, that works out to about $3/year. If it were on a subscription plan I would have had to toss it out years ago when Northgate went bankrupt and the keyboard would instantly have stopped working.
Those keyboards did provide feedback to management that work was being done. 
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Is the typing feel similar to a modern mechanical keyboard?
For me this makes sense, those who use the roads most, pay the most.
In the UK this is already true, just that the tax is paid in fuel duty.
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Here in the US that’s typically how it works too, if I’m understanding you correctly.
They apply a per-gallon tax when you put gas in your car. But a car that gets 10 miles to the gallon vs. a car that gets 40 miles to the gallon, then, pay the same tax for up to a 4x variance in road usage/wear. And anybody with an electric vehicle doesn’t pay anything, even though they’re using the roads.
Aligning economics to reality is always interesting.
The IBM Model M. I keep mine next to the 6 D-cell MagLite in my home defense cabinet
Edit: @Synchronicity beat me to it!
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Yes – the ALPS key switches provide tactile feedback as well as click and a sound when the key bottoms out. I’ve had no experience with the modern custom keyboard and switches, though.
I’ll leave this up for a day or two:
https://almy.us/Omnikey.mov
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That’s what I meant re. the US when I said:
(I know, “gas” is an Americanism.)
Replacing the gasoline tax/fuel duty with an actual miles per gallon tax makes logical sense due to the move to electric vehicles, but I hope they find another solution because I don’t like the idea of the government installing surveillance devices on everyone’s vehicles to measure miles driven.
To be fair, miles-driven taxation would also have to account for vehicle weight, because a heavy SUV is going to hammer the roads more than a lightweight subcompact car. The gas tax more or less accounts for that because of differences in fuel consumption.
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Let’s not get into a taxation debate between the US and Britain in here. It got a little out of hand last time. 
🇬🇧
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Here’s what Oregon is testing.
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Back in the day the Apple mouse (Magic Mouse?) that came with my iMac was horrible. I tried several mice from major brands - Logitech, Microsoft, and probably others - but they ranged from not very good to worse. And then I started buying one of the best sellers on Amazon, $10-$20, and haven’t looked back. They work great, and I’ve had only one actually stop functioning.
Of course, I’m easy pleased, I don’t use fancy functions, though some of these mice have included extra buttons, which I ignore.
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