Ergonomic Mechanical-Switch Keyboard? 310
dotancohen writes "As wear and tear on my hands builds up, I find that I need an ergonomic (split) keyboard. It seems the vast majority of available ergonomic models are either crippled with dome-switches or have unusual designs, which place many critical keys under the thumbs (I cannot use my right thumb). The one normal-appearing contender, the Northgate Ergonomic Evolution, seems to be noisier than even the Model M — in fact, it echoes! Programmers and hobbyists geeky enough to be here today: what do you type on?"
Bad technique (Score:2, Interesting)
Normal keyboard. Been doing it for 35 years now with no problems. Hate 'ergonomic' keyboards.
Cherry Mx (Score:2, Interesting)
Elite Keyboards [slashdot.org] is a good place to buy them at.
You can read more about Mechanical Key switch keyboards here: Mechanical Key siwtch keyboards demystified [hothardware.com]
It's all about the Negative slope! (Score:4, Interesting)
Half Height Ergo? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft 4000 (Score:3, Interesting)
Coding Horror... (Score:3, Interesting)
Jeff Atwood had a post on a remarkably similar subject last Friday:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/10/the-keyboard-cult.html [codinghorror.com]
that references the geekhack site.
Full sized laptop key style (Score:3, Interesting)
Before even owning a laptop/netbook, I fell in love with the low-depth, nearly silent click of laptop keyboard keys made for the full size keyboard. However, there's quite a number of people who like this, so it's not entirely easy to find them anymore.
Counterintuitive? Definitely. You see, once all the millions of keyboard manufacturers noticed the trend, they started making short/shallow keys with the exact same switch as standard keyboards. So, while it looks like a laptop keyboard, they're quite frequently normal crap keyboards whose downward press, if slightly off-angle, produces a scrape within the switch that slows/messes up typing or completely blows a gaming experience.
I can't buy keyboards online anymore because I just need to test it out myself. "Slime" and "Laptop style" just isn't enough to convince me.
minimum key travel (Score:1, Interesting)
I've found that minimal key travel to be more beneficial and comfortable. The Apple USB Aluminum is dead on for that.
Amiga 4000 keyboard? (Score:4, Interesting)
Build one yourself? (Score:3, Interesting)
You could get a cherry G80-3000 in one of the 3 characteristics (hard-click, soft-click or linear) in a layout of your choice. It has individual switches of excellent quality.
Then arrange them on solder-dot epoxy PCB's just the way you like and wire them to the controller in the original matrix. This may take a day or two of work, but it will give you exactly what you need/want, and these cherry switches keep forever. For most keys, you should be able to keep the original key-caps, but standard-sized key-caps are also available for these switches.
End result may not be too pretty and this is significant effort. On the other side, you would get exactly what you think you need and could even change things later.
fix your health not the keyboard! (Score:5, Interesting)
i know this is going to sound strange - you asked one question but get an answer to another, but the root cause of the problem isn't the keyboard, it's the fact that you're hunched over it, tensed up, locking out the blood supply from your arms and screwing up your hands.
to fix that, you should AT LEAST be doing the overarm stretch: stick hand straight up, bend elbow so that hand goes behind head with elbow still up in air, then take other hand onto elbow, pull and lean geeeently sideways so that entire side stretches
you should also be doing "horse stance" from tai-ji, which is really quite complex to describe, but imagine that you're sat on a horse: your legs are apart, knees bent, and hands outstretched imagine holding reins _but_, the actual tai-ji "horse stance" has some quite complex and specific positions and purpose. the primary purpose is to stretch tendons on the *underside* of your arms and in fingers (forearms as well) as well as elevating the heart-rate.
so, you have to push your elbows outwards so that your upper arms are 45 degrees from vertical, but forearms are absolutely horizontal. hands you have to imagine that you are holding two basket-balls, one in each, palms down but slightly elevated a fraction, fingers splayed as far wide as you can go.
get it right and you should feel loots of tendons stretching under your armpits, at your elbow-forearm _and_ wrists _and_ the thumb and little finger tendons! and that's exactly what you need - to stretch out that which you've utterly cramped out and damaged.
the horse-stance itself results in quite seriously elevated heart rate: you're bending your knees and staying there, so you should be breathing deeply and fully. stay there for as long as possible, increase until you get to 5 minutes. you will be surprised: horse stance for 5 minutes is one hell of a long time.
the other one is the yoga position where you sit on the floor, put one leg bent into your crotch and the other straight out, then lean over and grab ankle (or as close as you can get it). with each breath out, go down a little further. DO NOT "shake". if you feel yourself shaking, BACK OFF.
what i do with this yoga position is, rather than stay going down straight is i roll _sideways_ after a while, so that i get more stretch on the insides of my arms and side, which is exactly where you need the circulation increased, to get bloodflow back to your arms and fingers. repeat on the other side but come up SLOWLY - don't just try to jolt yourself out because you _will_ pull a muscle that way, especially at full stretch.
all of these exercises are designed to increase the circulation on the _underside_ of your arms (at the top) as it's here which is actually causing the blood flow to decrease, toxins to build up, tension to happen and damage to occur.
so - yeah. fuck the keyboard - get your health sorted out.
Re:a rancid (Score:3, Interesting)
You can wash it in the top rack of the dishwasher, then dry the crap out of it; viola - clean keyboard. It got the sticky Pepsi out of an old USB keyboard I had, left it looking and typing like new. Except another other user removed all the screws and lost some, but otherwise totally harmless to the 'board.
Curls (Score:3, Interesting)
get a 10 to 20 pound weight (it should feel light but tire you after 20-30 reps) and do forearm curls.
Don't overbend the wrist.
Part of your issue may be tendonitis in your forearms (which these exercizes exhaust and release).
Also upright rowing (a lot of "wrist" issues are really shoulder/back issues) gain with medium weights (feels light- but tires you after 20-30 reps).
Re:Keyboard love (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Full sized laptop key style (Score:2, Interesting)
The typing experience is superb! Although the layout is slightly different from the classic 104 key standard, I found I was able to touch type from day one, including cursor keys, I am also able to type faster and with less fatigue. I often prop up the front edge on a wrist rest to gain a reverse tilt, which helps with wrist strain.
Although Logitech discontinued this model (I bought two for $20 at that time), they now offer two illuminated models with the same PerfectStroke key mechanism - one wired, one wireless, and both overpriced. I'm keeping an eye on DealNews to grab one when they briefly hit a reasonable price point.
Re:fix your health not the keyboard! (Score:3, Interesting)
10 years ago i got the people at work to pay for a swivel chair and a split keyboard that was mounted on the arm-rests. it was well fucking cool. despite being a touch-typist for 15 years at that point i still found it took me 2 weeks to get used to typing on a keyboard that was out of sight: i learned quickly that even peripheral vision was getting me to move my hands to the right places. the funniest bit was the space-bar: there were two of them. but, i wasn't _quite_ the touch-typist i thought i was. so i would be tappity-tappity-BAMouch gently switch to using right thumb to press the space-bar instead of hitting unyielding plastic with the left... ... but by far and above the coolest thing was peoples' faces when they came into my cubicle. a 17-in monitor running 7 linux consoles at 80x50 (consolechars -f default8x9), with me sitting 6ft back because i had my feet up on the desk, typing at 170wpm on this weird fucking keyboard - the combination of apparent insolence, laid-back attitude with obvious signs of non-stop frenzied activity at distances that made their eyes water trying to discern what the fuck i was doing just... yeah - i enjoyed working there :)