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Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

blog.scottlogic.com

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Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#131

Post by doesnt_know »

polote wrote: post #86
verisimilidude wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an educated take. Just to take my own example, I’m unable to use the Kinesis Advantage because the bones in my right wrist are curved following an old injury. I’m physically incompatible with that keyboard. But split keyboards work great for me! I can rotate one side to accommodate my arm’s curve. Kinesis Freestyle is great for this. Ergodox also works. By your logic, I guess this makes me a fanboy? My poi…

I'm going to be downvoted again, but what I'm trying to say is that Ergodox is to ergonomic keyboard what GraphQL is to REST. There are some specific use case in which Ergodox is better but most of the time the best choice is to go with Kinesis.

> There are some specific use case in which Ergodox is better but most of the time the best choice is to go with Kinesis.

Probably could have said just this and it would have communicated your point without coming across as a condescending asshole.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#133

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

I have that exact trackball mouse and haven't had a single issue with Manjaro 20+. The nice thing about the usage of it with linux is it natively knows LMB & RMB is MMB. In windows you need logitechs software to get it to work.

I've since become an ambidextrous mouse user. Rollerball for left, traditional for right.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#135

Post by lowbloodsugar »

petercooper wrote: post #3

Quite the rabbit hole and definitely worth the read :-) This seems a good place to bring up an odd experience of mine. I've had carpal tunnel for decades but no longer get many flare ups. After trying numerous keyboards, the solution turned out to be using Apple's Magic Keyboard and whatever their huge trackpad is called. The key for me seems to be low key travel, a smallish keyboard (to avoid any stretching), and av…

I have two: one for each hand.

I (used to) have to use my laptop a lot (meetings, traveling), so it didn't work for me to have a different keyboard at my desk. Then when I got stuck at home, I dug out my old kinesis but it was just too much effort to press those keys, and the cursor keys were just too far away. I could feel the muscles in my arms complaining.

But the pronation and ulnar deviation was a pain, so I bought another one, so now I can angle them perfectly for each hand. If you want to try it you'll need karibiner [1] so that the cmd keys work across keyboards.

I'm still using the magic mouse because I found click-drag with the trackpad to be shitty. Is there a trick to that?

[1] https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#136

Post by [deleted] »

polote wrote: post #86
verisimilidude wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an educated take. Just to take my own example, I’m unable to use the Kinesis Advantage because the bones in my right wrist are curved following an old injury. I’m physically incompatible with that keyboard. But split keyboards work great for me! I can rotate one side to accommodate my arm’s curve. Kinesis Freestyle is great for this. Ergodox also works. By your logic, I guess this makes me a fanboy? My poi…

I'm going to be downvoted again, but what I'm trying to say is that Ergodox is to ergonomic keyboard what GraphQL is to REST. There are some specific use case in which Ergodox is better but most of the time the best choice is to go with Kinesis.

[deleted]

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#137

Post by kps »

nine_k wrote: post #100
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Moonlander lets you angle the thumb cluster seprately, where the ergodox ez is a single flat plane. For the bowl shape, you'd need to look at something like the Dactyl Manuform I mentioned. Many split keyboards transfer keypresses from one side to the other via simple audio cables, I believe footpedals could be spliced in there too, but that's just speculation.

Most often the audio cable carries serial port signals (not proper RS232 afaict but logically a com port). Splicing in a pedal should be doable, as long as you don't press it simultaneously with a key on the "remote" part of the split keyboard.

I²C, at least originally (I haven't kept up with all the later variations), so you could put multiple devices on the bus, assuming firmware support.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#138

Post by autocorr »

Thanks for the great write-up! It's interesting to see how much room there is for personalizing and optimization once you lift the lid on the first change. I started the journey with an ErgoDox and now am typing this on a fully custom hand-wired beast. The great thing about the ErgoDox though is that (a) you can just buy it and (b) it runs QMK and can be programmed through their simple web interface.

For anyone reading this and seeing all the craziness in the post and the linked comments, it's entirely do-able to learn multiple layouts/keyboards and keep them mentally separate. The key thing is to use them both regularly. It doesn't have to be an either-or proposition between "use the standard keyboard of the Earth" and "use this hyper-personalized one". You can in fact use both as long as you don't go cold-turkey and stop using a standard keyboard for six months.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#139

Post by StillBored »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #36
detaro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty people who use ergonomic keyboards also use a laptop keyboard directly all the time and there's few complaints about that. Are you talking from experience?

I bounce around between keyboards a lot, because I work on industrial machinery with dedicated computers. I use a standard, flat, 105-key keyboard (with quiet tactile mechanical switches) as my daily driver. I also run 2 laptops, a personal Thinkpad and a company Latitude, usually plugged into a dock with the aforementioned keyboard (I have 3, one on my cart in the shop, one in my home office, and one in my work offi…

I have the same problem, with laptop keyboards/etc. I just have a stock of the MS natural keyboards and I sprinkled them everywhere i'm using a computer for anything that isn't typing out a quick email/whatever.

So drop the laptop on the doc, use a natural keyboard. Drop it on the desk at home, plug in a keyboard, etc.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#140

Post by StillBored »

jankotek wrote: post #35
larzang wrote: post #23

I would have been perfectly happy if Microsoft had just kept making the Natural 4000 forever. Logitech has some 20+ year old designs they keep producing because for some people they're perfection, and I'd hoped Microsoft would continue likewise since it's been well over a decade with the 4000 too. But nope, it's dead, and the replacement isn't nearly as good.

I had 3 of those, but they are very unreliable. Contact foil always fails after couple of years.

I haven't had one of the "Natural 4000 v1.0" keyboards fail yet. There was a run of them a few years back where the quality sucked though. I had new ones where brand new out of the box one had to mash some of the keys really hard to get them to register.

As someone else said though, they are very susceptible to crap working its way under the membrane since its oddly shaped (and there are a bunch of individual sections IIRC). I've fixed the coffee on the keyboard problem a couple times by opening them up, and very carefully cleaning them (both the contacts and the membrane) with isopropyl and lint free q-tips.

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