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My favorite keyboards

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Re: My favorite keyboards

#51

Post by yonaguska »

otherme123 wrote: post #22
eimrine wrote: post #2

Any QWERTY or QWERTY-inspired keyboard (layout) is silly. Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...

My experience switching layout is poor. I touch typed Qwerty at around 75 WPM. I switched to Colemak, and after a month or so of Monkeytype I am back at around 75 WPM but didn't gain significant speed. I never had serious wrist pain, so I can't say Colemak helped with that. After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from…

I switched to colemak, but I paired this switch with split keyboards. So qwerty is still easy to use on regular keyboards, but I'm sure I'd get super tripped up if I used qwerty on a split kb.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#52

Post by eimrine »

otherme123 wrote: post #22
eimrine wrote: post #2

Any QWERTY or QWERTY-inspired keyboard (layout) is silly. Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...

My experience switching layout is poor. I touch typed Qwerty at around 75 WPM. I switched to Colemak, and after a month or so of Monkeytype I am back at around 75 WPM but didn't gain significant speed. I never had serious wrist pain, so I can't say Colemak helped with that. After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from…

You have read my comment inattentively, I consider QWERTY-inspired ones exactly as weak as QWERTY.

Speed is not important in typing goals at all. What maters is ability to delegate a typing routine out of your consciousness. No peeking, no misusing pinkies, no caring about WPM, no mismatching keys from different layouts. You should always prefer to put all of your 10 fingers on the keyboard even if all you need is to type one letter, even being interrupted from sleep, because you should understand that touchtyping is faster than hunt-and-peck even in one-button case.

You either can input your password using touchtyping or not. If you have achieved touchtyping on any layout, no switching helps you to decrease cognitive hardness. Touchtyping should be done in youth, so if you are not cosplaying some idiots you should devote your brain cells to the proper layout at once.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#54

Post by ryan_n »

gempir wrote: post #15

I really didn't enjoy the cheap plastic construction of the Moonlander. I had two of them for home and work. I even modded a mousepad onto the wristrests to make it more comftable. But in the end the housing being out of plastic, it creaked, wobbled and just was not satisfying to type on. I came from premium mechnical keyboards with solid steel or aluminum construction. I ended up with the Neo Ergo, a middle ground.…

Yea I used the kinesis 360 for a short time but couldn't stand how cheap it felt. Such a big difference from nicer custom keyboards, and it's essentially the same price which is a shame.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#55

Post by aa-jv »

dofm wrote: post #45
aa-jv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Dexed Get a Zynthian and dive right in to all the FM synthesis you can possibly imagine, and more. Its pretty freakin' powerful. Plus, you can do all kinds of mad things with it, vis a vis oddball controllers and such.

I'm interested to make a Dexed thing more for the fun/process of it. At the moment I am mostly playing lap steel but it's early days as an electric player so I am trying to not spend much money :-) For lap steel which is continuous pitch I feel I'm more likely to settle on a Boss SY synth pedal or something signal-processing-based like it, rather than MIDI. But these days audio-based midi-tracking like MIDI Guitar 2/…

I fully appreciate the desire to make a Dexed for the fun of it, however .. if you haven't dug into Zynthian yet, it won't be obviously clear that:

>Boss SY synth pedal or something signal-processing-based like it

.. is exactly what the Zynthian delivers, plus way, way, way more. You can run Dexed on it, and also run multiple signal-processing chains for your lap steel. It is huge bang for the buck! Especially if you do live things, you can have Dexed tracks running in parallel to your FX chain ..

Just sayin', take a closer look. For lap steel (and indeed any similar instruments), Zynthian is a godsend. (Get a good mic for it too, of course..)

I am positive you will find it extremely rewarding to pipe your lap steel through these:

https://zynthian.org/engines#effect

.. alongside these:

https://zynthian.org/engines#synth

(Dexed is but one in a very, very sexy list..)

Re: My favorite keyboards

#56

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

chao- wrote: post #5

After a decade of exploring various mechanical keyboards (a few form factors, but mostly exploring the switches), I settled on a Topre Realforce around 2016 and fell in love. I later learned of the Topre silent switches (often branded as "Type-S"), and have used those ever since over many few boards: a HHKB, a Leopold FC660C with a PCB swap for programmable layers, various revisions of the Realforce. I used a friend'…

I was using a standard/non-silent HHKB but found it a little too noisy for a quiet office. Plus I like using arrow keys and found I'd get a sore pinky with the HHKB layout.

I'm back to a cherry style board with silent tactile switches now but have half a mind to try and find a 75%ish layout with exploded arrow keys and with silent Topre switches.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#58

Post by fmajid »

My iKBC MF87v2 from 2018. I like it so much I bought a spare, even though it cost $170 at the time. Double-shot light-through PBT keycaps so the labels won't wear off or the keys develop that yucky slick finish, a solid block of aluminum that's 1.8kg so it's not going to shift on the desk, nice thocky MX Blue switches and a Tenkeyless layout without annoying numeric keypad, because I'm not an accountant.

I keep a Ducky One 3 with silent red switches at work because I am not a sociopath.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#59

Post by _thisdot »

otherme123 wrote: post #22
eimrine wrote: post #2

Any QWERTY or QWERTY-inspired keyboard (layout) is silly. Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...

My experience switching layout is poor. I touch typed Qwerty at around 75 WPM. I switched to Colemak, and after a month or so of Monkeytype I am back at around 75 WPM but didn't gain significant speed. I never had serious wrist pain, so I can't say Colemak helped with that. After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from…

Interesting. My experience is almost the same. But I wouldn't call the experience is poor at all. The biggest advantage is that typing feels smoother with Colemak.

The fact that just learning to touch type in any layout is what contributes to the speed is probably right. But then again, my experience is that speed is primarily a function of practice and much less of technique. I remember reading some AMAs by someone who types at 200+WPM and they mentioned that they use QWERTY and they don't touch type.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#60

Post by ubermonkey »

I loved the Model M, but my first real THIS IS MY FAVORITE I WILL CUT YOU keyboard was a Northgate. Dang, I loved that one.

For most of the last 20 years I've been on Kinesis boards. First a regular Ergo, and then starting about 6 months ago their new Advantage 360, which is a definite improvement.

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