Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My favorite keyboards

fabiensanglard.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 151 posts

Re: My favorite keyboards

#111

Post by bescob_ar »

Great article, your site is super easy to read.

Moonlander's build quality leaves a lot to be desired for IMO. Tenting only available for biggest hand size config, thumb clusters fly off, ports struggle after a few years of taking care of it.

I like RealForce 55G (non-variable) the most, or really any full-sized-boring-keyboard with any amount of tactility (even the MS Ergo). Buckling springs would be great if they weren't super loud. HHKB is pretty rough for the shoulders, it's best use is on a shelf visible from your webcam.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#113

Post by warp »

closeparen wrote: post #108

From what I've read, very few people who buy ortho split keyboards, even people who love and swear by them, ever recover their WPM. I could never get comfortable on my Ergodox. The Glove80 seems more promising, but I can't afford the productivity hit at work, particularly when communicating on Slack. But the Kinesis Freestyle2 with the tenting kit quickly became my daily driver & basically solved my wrist and thumb p…

I just tested. I'm 99wpm on a splitkb.com Kyria split ortho and 102wpm on the built-in keyboard of my macbook, doing a single run on each on monkeytype.com.

Switching layouts (e.g. qwerty to dvorak or colemak) takes a long time to get back to your normal speed, but ortho/columnar vs staggered in my experience is something you get used to very quickly.

But apparently there is a huge variance in how quickly folks adapt, so I may just be lucky or have enough past experience with different keyboard shapes that it happened to be easier for me.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#114

Post by wiredfool »

raudette wrote: post #105

The author writes: "I discovered the IBM Model M in 1993 ... It took me many years to find one. I vividly remember the Craigslist ad for a dilapidated computer shop in a Toronto suburb. Inside I found piles of them, stacked six feet high. All of them had some kind of damage so I picked a few for $20 apiece and rebuilt one that looked pristine." My Model M story: I'd heard of the famous Model M for years. I found a Mo…

I bought 2 M13s (one black, one beige, the one with the builtin track point) in Seattle thrift stores in the early 2000's, one was $5 and one was $10.

At one point, other copies were both $300 plus on ebay.

Sadly the black one has an intermittent issue with some of the keys where hits are doubled, but the beige one is still a daily driver.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#115

Post by wiredfool »

mghackerlady wrote: post #94
dofm wrote: post #6

Yamaha DX7. Oh you mean… OK. The one on my 2008 unibody MacBook, which I likely put the most hours in on of any of them. Then the one on my ancient and lovely Thinkpad T240 — one of the most pragmatically delightful computers ever — and probably the N33SX I owned in 1992. The keyboard on the M1 Max MBP is quite nice, too.

The only good laptop keyboards have been older MacBooks and older Thinkpads. The only way to top that would be someone eschewing portability for a mechanical keyboard of some kind. I would totally buy that

First generation powerbooks, the 140/170, were amazin keyboards. The 100, not so much.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#116

Post by mckn1ght »

closeparen wrote: post #108

From what I've read, very few people who buy ortho split keyboards, even people who love and swear by them, ever recover their WPM. I could never get comfortable on my Ergodox. The Glove80 seems more promising, but I can't afford the productivity hit at work, particularly when communicating on Slack. But the Kinesis Freestyle2 with the tenting kit quickly became my daily driver & basically solved my wrist and thumb p…

I went from “regular” keyboard to kinesis freestyle 2 to kinesis advantage 360.

The switch to the freestyle 2 was basically seamless. Switching to the advantage 360 was brutal, but I can tell you that i have not only fully recovered my typing speed but have even improved on my historical ability.

I used monkeytype.com for a couple years before the jump to the advantage 360 and still to this day, and you can see the deep trough my speed went through while i figured out the ortholinear layout and thumb clusters, and the new all time high records i’ve recently set.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#117

Post by krackers »

savwolf wrote: post #61

MS Sculpt ergonomic keyboard for home (discontinued now but "improved" versions are available here ( https://matiaseu.store/products/fk413xx ), Logitech K380 when I travel to the office.

>discontinued

in case you don't know, there's back and made by incase. The first manufacturing run completely sold out I think, it's backordered until sep 2026. The matias is... not a good replacement, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388976

Re: My favorite keyboards

#118

Post by iLemming »

throwawaySimon wrote: post #16

I find it strange that people who start caring about ergonomics settle for Ergodox, Moonlander and other halfway there solutions when Kinesis, Glove80, Maltron who have put in real ergonomic research exist..

I know, right? I feel every keyboard warrior goes through stages where each stage imposes a "no return" point - mechanical, split, concaved. I've tried so many boards, yet these three factors invariable remain important. There are many things I dislike about my Advantage 360 - it's absolutely not suitable for travel, even taking it from the desk to the couch is a hassle; there are too many keys (the halves definitely never needed to be this big); firmware patching is wonky (I have the ZMK variant); etc.

Yet, that is the only class of boards that allow me typing without getting wrist and neck pain for 14-16 hours. Over the years I owned like a dozen boards from KinesisErgo - I started with Advantage models, then Advantage II, then I bought Freestyle for my kid, then pre-ordered 360, etc. In-between I tried Glove80, Mistel, Ergodox, Vortex Pok3r, and some others.

I am also sad that I have discovered the importance of the choosing the right switches way too late. I highly recommend getting to know your boards and the types of switches you can install on them, and then get a switch tester. Finding just the right type is absolutely worth it.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#119

Post by jerlam »

closeparen wrote: post #108

From what I've read, very few people who buy ortho split keyboards, even people who love and swear by them, ever recover their WPM. I could never get comfortable on my Ergodox. The Glove80 seems more promising, but I can't afford the productivity hit at work, particularly when communicating on Slack. But the Kinesis Freestyle2 with the tenting kit quickly became my daily driver & basically solved my wrist and thumb p…

People who are happy with their keyboard over a long period of time don't bother to test their WPM and tell other people on the internet about it. Nor do they regularly buy new keyboards and screw up their muscle memory.

I've been using some kind of split keyboard for the past 25 years, last eight on a Kinesis. My WPM on a normal keyboard is ghastly.

Re: My favorite keyboards

#120

Post by archarios »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #18

My ErgodoxEZ: - nearly made me cry. - solved my back pain. When you didn't learn to type properly, relearning to type can be a very difficult task; re-learning on a split keyboard is particularly unforgiving. Around three weeks into re-learning I was convinced I would never learn properly and that I'd wasted a lot of time and money (I was freelancing at the time) on something that wouldn't help me eat, never mind sle…

Exercising and specifically lifting weights will do so much more for your back pain than any ergonomic setup ever will
Post reply on HN