I like my ergodox but I love my Kinesis Advantage. Seriously consider looking at the Kinesis before any other option. The learning curve is hard but the pay off is amazing. I truly love that keyboard and will replace it with a new one as soon as I need to.
I’ve had my eye on the Kinesis advantage for a long time. Is there any form of virtual layering like on the ergodox? That’s been a key feature for me with the ergodox and I’d have a hard time living without it.
There's only 1 layer on the Kinesis Advantage 2. The "numpad" layer. It is fully reprogramable so it doesn't need to be a numpad and you can layer all the keys but yeah it's a drawback compared to the Ergodox or Moonlander.
When I look at my hands (31) my fingers actually look slightly twisted and crooked. There’s a chance that I might have broke them without realising when I was younger doing martial arts and rugby but I’m of the firm belief that they’ve got this way through hammering shallow non ortholinear keyboards (specifically the magic keyboard) for years. I’ve had pain in my fingers at certain points over the years from typing f…
It's common. Look at an old person's hands, especially one with arthritis.
I can’t rule that out but the pain was completely linked to times when I was using the magic keyboard heavily for days on end. I don’t have any pain now nor do I have any pain using the magic keyboard, I just kind of healed and adjusted. This is what makes me wonder if it was some kind of fracture caused by the heavy repetition that I made worse by working through. The twisting and misalignment is all limited to the part of the finger above the knuckle and seems to be most pronounced on my index and middle fingers which again supports the hypothesis.
A couple thoughts. I've had an ErgoDox for almost 9 years. I wrote my thoughts after a year here [0]. I use the Norman layout which I'm generally pleased with but don't know if the finger travel buys you that much. More important to me had been leveraging both thumbs to hit commonly used keys and modifiers. In the last week, I was made aware of the miryoku layout and made a Norman version. (Prior to COVID-19, I trave…
Thanks for sharing. Ultimately my decision to go with the EZ was based on the reputation of customer support and solidity of build. The reports of malfunctioning parts combined with poor responses from the company (exists but) are few and far between. It has been my personal experience as well that the support email is very responsive. I’ve only ever asked about firmware related things, as my EZs have withstood the rest of time (4 years) physically. They cover the bases on being easy to manipulate as far as firmware configuration and switch selection (the basics).
If you’re interested in ergo, I recommend visiting the ergo keyboard comparison tool [1] to get a sense of how deep this rabbit hole goes. And you can now use YAML to prototype custom layouts via Ergogen [2]. [1] https://jhelvy.shinyapps.io/splitkbcompare/ [2] https://ergogen.cache.works/
I wish there was a showroom or something I could visit to try them all out and see what fits my hands. I don't mind dropping $300 on a keyboard once, but I don't want to buy 10 different keyboards just to try them and then have to sell the ones I don't want.
If you’re technically inclined (and a hobbyist tinkerer), you could invest in a 3D printer and get to playing with tweak-able keyboards like the Dactyl Manuform. There’s a whole world of 3D printable ergo that lets you adjust columns, thumbs, etc. such that it perfectly matches your hands. I haven’t dabbled personally, but I think a capable printer can be had for your mentioned $300.00 albeit a lot of labor is required to see a keyboard to fruition.
I have long wished there was a keyboard rental service. Trouble is that an ortho layout can take months to get used to. I am still 20% slower on an ortho board than I was on a laptop keyboard, but the comfort is worth it, especially for shoulder pain.
The question is whether the comfort is because of ortho, or just because of nice big split layout keyboard?
I’d guess that a reduction in shoulder pain is a result of switching to “split”. I know that my posture improved by switching to split. It’s one of the biggest changes you can make in keyboarding I think (from the perspective of total muscle activation). In the end it all comes down to what you like, though.
I bought and use two Moonlanders. I’d like future versions to integrate a small trackball and to be wireless. That said, this helped my shoulder and wrist pain tremendously. I recommend it for those with injuries and unique needs. This year, I’m trying the Halmak layout to type even more efficiently. Pair it with an Evoluent mouse or similar vertical mouse for a great setup.
> I’d like future versions to integrate a small trackball Maybe you are aware, but it is possible to configure a layer to include mouse controls directly on the keys: https://i.imgur.com/5x3YTg6.png I use this a lot and this prevents me from having to reach for the mouse to do trivial stuff.
I’d extend this comment further to eliminate your use of the word “trivial”. I don’t have a mouse anymore. Mouse keys are “better overall”, in my experience, for everything except gaming. That being said, I left the EZ’s configurator a long time ago. The tweaking to get mouse keys working optimally probably requires diving into the actual firmware. For example, you definitely need MK_COMBINED to combine basic acceleration with forced speed control. I also put a lot of thought into making it VERY easy to navigate to and from the mouse layer (dedicated and easily-accessible thumb keys) and to be able to tell if I’m on the mouse layer.
Does ortholinear/columnar actually feel better? I feel like I see many comments about how there's a bit of a learning curve that can be overcome after a while, but very few comments about whether overcoming that learning curve is actually worth it and it's really more comfortable. Is it supposed to be better for your wrists? Or your fingers? The "split" aspect of these keyboards is definitely more comfortable imo - I…
A benefit for ortholinear I don’t see mentioned here: it’s a little less cognitive load to locate keys by touch. As someone else mentioned, I think “split” might be important here (and I don’t have any experience with non-split ortholinear). Also, this only applies after you’ve overcome the learning curve. All this taken into account: with my ortholinear board, I rarely mistype. I attribute this to it just being easier to know which key I’m hitting with a columnar layout. You can take this a step further with CRKBD and similar such that each key is only 1 unit away from home (and thus it’s next to impossible to mistype).
Does anybody know something similar, with a trackball? I got interested in these split ergo keyboards when I saw the new Kinesis models [0] but unfortunately they don't ship to my location. I came across the Charybdis [1] and I loved the idea but I'm not capable enough to assemble it myself and the guy making them has a many week lead time, so I'd love an equivalent. [0]: https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/advantage3…
CST trackballs use a billiard ball sized trackball which seems silly until you try it for a while. Super smooth and smaller movement to get a lot more travel. Honestly though I consider mice and trackballs a crutch and really only for design work or gaming. I ditched a mouse at my last office entirely favoring mouse emulation mode on the ergodox, a tiling window manager like i3, and the keyboard driven qutebrowser.
As a fellow mouse keys enthusiast, I recommend checking out the extra configuration that available if you open up the actual firmware (if you’re looking for some fiddling to do). MK_COMBINED, for example, allows you to use the basic mouse acceleration and then clamp the speed to specified levels if required (for detail work, jumping monitors, etc.). You have to program, compile, and flash the firmware the “hard” way to do this, but the EZ’s configurator lets you download your current source as a great starting place.
And once again, no ISO layout option available :( While I can understand that US companies address the US market first, why are they ignoring large markets of the rest of the world, which are larger than the US?