Unapologetic mindless link propagation time — this is just way too useful to let it slip: Olivier Dagenais on a hack to make the "zoom" slider on the Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard function as a "scroll" slider. (Hat tip: Ayende).
Comments closed » I’ve decided to call it a day with my Kinesis keyboard.
This hasn’t been an easy decision. The Kinesis Advantage is a very nice piece of hardware, and I actually quite like it. Once you get used to it, it is very comfortable to type with, though you need to use Dvorak or Colemak to make the most of it. However, there is one very important thing that I have never been able to get used to on it: programming.
I’ve tried it with qwerty, and with Dvorak, and more recently in the past couple of weeks with Colemak, but these haven’t made any difference. The fact remains that there are some keys which are rarely used in normal typing that are used very frequently in writing code. Keys such as the square and curly brackets, the backslash, plus, minus and equals, and the cursor keys. These are frustratingly awkwardly placed on the Kinesis, and I have never managed to get used to them.
Yes, I know that the keyboard is reprogrammable, but you would have to reprogram something else in their places, and that something else would just be as awkward.
A while ago, someone left a comment on my blog assuring me that I would get used to it and I just needed to bear with it. Well, I’ve now had it for eighteen months and I still haven’t got used to it. There comes a point when you just have to face the fact that something isn’t going anywhere and you need to throw in the towel.
Since programming is what earns me my daily bread, I just can’t carry on regardless.
I’m going back to the Microsoft Natural line of keyboards, which are a tried and trusted solution that I’ve always found very satisfactory. I’ve ordered myself a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard, and I am expecting delivery on Wednesday. I first saw one earlier this year on a visit to a client and I was fairly impressed with it. The key beds are curved slightly to make it more ergonomic, though the effect is much more subtle than the Kinesis. And while the £30 price tag may sound a tad extravagant given that keyboards come pretty much free with computers these days anyway, it is a lot more reasonable than the £225 you spend on a Kinesis. Besides, I don’t like flat keyboards that don’t give you the separation between the hands.
I’m not sure whether I will settle for one of the alternative layouts in the end. I found them almost essential on the Kinesis, on which qwerty is particularly cumbersome, but on more conventional keyboards the difference seems much smaller to me, and probably not worth the effort involved in switching. I never managed to match my qwerty typing speed on Dvorak, and now that I’ve switched back over the past few days I’ve realised that I can manage quite a good rate on qwerty, though I haven’t actually measured it properly. There is also the Remote Desktop Problem — when you have to use other computers, alternative layouts tend to get in the way somewhat. Besides, I’ve expended far too much time and energy on this whole kettle of fish and I am rather disinclined to experiment any further now.
For the next few days at least, I am back on my Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
The reason for this is that my Kinesis Advantage keyboard went belly-up last night. At around the time that Sweden scored their last minute equaliser against England, it suddenly decided to stop responding to some of the keys. Fortunately it is still under warranty so I will be sending it back to get fixed in the next day or two, but having said that, it is still a little bit annoying.
On the other hand, I’m not missing it too badly as of yet. While the Kinesis is more comfortable in some respects — it seems to have knocked a couple of my bad typing habits on the head and the mild discomfort in my right arm has more or less gone now — it does have a few niggles. The curly brackets and the +/= key are in totally the wrong places if you are trying to code in a C-style language such as C++, Java, Perl, PHP or C#, for starters. You have to curl your fingers on your right hand underneath your palms to get to the curly brackets, which tend to get used pretty heavily in the aforementioned languages, and the +/= key is placed counterintuitively in the top left hand corner of the keyboard. The position of the arrow keys is just horrendous — directly below the C, V, M and comma keys, where I am constantly pressing them by mistake, sometimes with fairly annoying consequences. To be sure, you can reprogram the keys if you like, but I haven’t done so as of yet, mainly because I haven’t been able to decide where to move them to or what to put in their place.
I will probably keep it once it’s fixed, but all in all I’m not sure that I would go out of my way to recommend the Kinesis keyboard. At £225 including VAT and delivery it is probably overkill, given that the Microsoft Natural Keyboard is a fraction of the price and you are likely to find it perfectly adequate as it is. On the other hand, if you are concerned about RSI and have to type a lot of ordinary text rather than C# code, it may be worth considering getting a second hand one. One thing is clear, however: both are a vast improvement over the horrible traditional flat keyboard layout.
Update: It was fixed under warranty.
Well I’ve finally done it. I took delivery of my brand new Kinesis keyboard today. It’s fully ergonomic — the keys are in curved bowls that are contoured to the shape of your hands — but man, it has prompted a few interesting comments to say the least.
My first impression is that it is going to take a little bit of getting used to. The general consensus of the blogosphere seems to be that you spend the first three days swearing at it then the rest of your life swearing by it. Quite what I end up thinking of it after thirty days remains to be seen, but I rather suspect that it will on the whole be pretty positive. I have it on a 30 day sale or return basis, so if I decide it’s not worth the money, I can send it back.
I’ll write a fuller review in a couple of weeks’ time once I have some idea of where it’s going. In the meantime, I’ve put my plans to switch to Dvorak on ice for the time being. However, you can switch the keyboard layout on the fly between QWERTY and Dvorak, or even re-map it to something totally esoteric if you like. So watch this space…
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Posted at 21:11 on 17 December 2007.