Friday, March 11, 2011 <---
Carpel tunnel much?
My new USB Kinesis ergonomic keyboard arrived a few days ago and I am enjoying it thoroughly. I had a PS2 version of the same keyboard I bought second hand from the same friend that got me onto them originally, but the PS2 to USB adapter required constant plugging and un-plugging and certain keys were giving me trouble in the finder. I had switched back to the apple generic slimline bluetooth keyboard for a while and in doing so had no hesitation in shipping out a brand new, black, USB model.
That's the apple multi-touch trackpad blu-tacked to the center panel there, mainly for 2 finger scrolling but the rare occasions I do require small cursor control. Otherwise I use a wacom intuos 3 or, if illustrating, my cintiq 12WX.
The apple keyboards look nice, but are really laptop keyboards in an aluminium enclosure. After only a week on the apple keyboard, not only could I no longer stand the sensation of hitting the bottom of the key travel every keystroke, my wrists were starting to complain, on occasion with considerable and enduring pain...
I cant put into words how much I LOVE the Kinesis welled keyboard. The keys are in-line with your fingers, the contoured wells are very well designed and using the thumbs for space, backspace and command keys is absolute genius. But the most important thing for me is the 4mm of travel in each key. This means you type without ever hitting the bottom and makes the single most important difference in typing sensation and speed.
I know $250 US is a lot for something that is usually $5... but if you type a lot, think about it, how much are your wrists worth to you? Absolutely no regrets and no hesitation recommending the Kinesis keyboards to you. Thank me later :)
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/
If you do purchase one, I recommend also changing the caps-lock key to a control key so you can hold cmd+ctrl keys with thumb and pinky. I also assign the control keys as command keys as these are the mac equivalent, and the alt keys into option keys. I use control a lot for sending a screen shot to the clipboard and also for cmd+ctrl key combos so I need my other hand. These are all simple options in the Mac OS and don't require any programming of the keyboard (although it is fully programmable).
<--- posted by Oliver at 4:15 PM --->
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