15 ms·
I'm a longtime Kinesis user and I had the pedals about 15 years back but I never made much use of them. I don't know if the Kinesis reduces the finger movement
by Nelson69 9y ago
I'm a longtime Kinesis user and I had the pedals about 15 years back but I never made much use of them.
I don't know if the Kinesis reduces the finger movement between rows, but your hands definitely sit in a much more relaxed way. The thumb has quite a bit more responsibility too and you don't do any stretch moves like using the pinky for the twiddle or a lot of control pressing. Love the keyboards.
As for the pedals, they are programmable and the general thinking was control/option/alt type configurations for them. I just never got in to heal-toe typing, the pedals got dusty and I never really used them much. Had I actually had CT or something, I think I might have been more motivated to make use of them.
- tedmiston 9y agoI've been eyeballing a Kinesis for a while, but am curious to know what kind of mouse or trackpad you use alongside it — especially if it's something particularly ergonomic, a vertical mouse, etc. I remember seeing someone mount a Magic Trackpad on the blank spot in the middle of the keyboard but am curious what normal mouse usage looks like with one.
- Nelson69 9y agoI used a mighty mouse with it as the last mouse. I've been using a magic trackpad lately. Definitely not the most ergonomic option but I like the hand gestures. Took maybe 3 days to get used to the movement between them mouse and the keyboard. I think it would be more uncomfortable to have one in the middle space in the keyboard, your hands sort of naturally fall away to the side but they have to reach in to the middle space.
- rovr138 9y agoI have a Kinesis and have a trackball to the right and a magic trackpad to the left. I tried velcroing the trackpad to the middle, but the angle is weird. I like it better to the left.
- powvans 9y agoI seem to remember that one of my buddies who had the Kinesis used a vertical trackball mouse. It was definitely a trackball and the ball was very large, maybe a little larger than a golf ball. I can't seem to find anything about vertical trackballs Googling it though.
- busterarm 9y agoEveryone I've seen with a Kinesis who actually had a mouse had one of these. They're also fantastic once you're used to them. I frequently consider switching to trackball, but my favorite option is still the Trackpoint. IBM/Lenovo really screwed the pooch there though.
- bosie 9y agoI have been using an evoluent with my kinesis for the last 10 years. Great ergonomic setup.
- flamtap 9y agoI have been using an Anker vertical mouse for about a year now. It's far from feature rich, but the build quality is impressive for a $20 mouse, and it's very comfortable. AAA battery life is good-great (it's not rechargable). I have medium-large hands for a male, and it sits in my hand great. As you get used to it, you do have to be careful you don't send it sailing across your desk when you go to reach for it! http://a.co/dw6aVMO http://a.co/dw6aVMO
- jto1218 9y agoI tried using one of these Evoluent ones which has a pretty high price tag (I think?) http://a.co/e8u6qen http://a.co/e8u6qen Ended up going back to the trusty $20 Anker cause it feels more comfortable on my hand/forearm. Go figure.
- nerdponx 9y agoCheck out the Dactyl. You can get one 3D printed for about the same cost as a Kinesis.
- maltalex 9y agoThis was always my question too. What’s the point of a 300$ keyboard that minimizes movement when you have to move your entire hand every time you you need a mouse? Completely avoiding the mouse isn’t an option for some workflows. I wish there were more keyboards with IBM-style trackpoints.
- hfdgiutdryg 9y agoWhat’s the point of a 300$ keyboard that minimizes movement when you have to move your entire hand every time you you need a mouse? The point is to reduce strain and fatigue of the fingers and wrists, not to reduce movement for the sake of reducing movement. Mouse ergonomics is a completely separate can of worms.
- maltalex 9y agoI was talking about reducing strain and fatigue. Moving your whole hand over the mouse over and over again introduces quite a lot of fatigue. This is why the keyboard and mouse aren’t separate problems. A keyboard that doesn’t have an integrated mouse solves only part of the problem. That’s why I like having a trackpoint for small mouse movements.
- rovr138 9y agoThe Advantage in my case helped reduce the strain of the positioning of the hands. When I have to travel and switch back to the MBP's keyboard, the position of my hands on the keyboard definitely causes discomfort if I have to type for more than a few hours a day. I don't mind having to switch to the mouse. It gives me time to take both hands of my keyboard and change their positions even if for a little bit.
- yangyang 9y agoI've been meaning to hack a trackpoint into my Kinesis. It's been done before, mounted where you can control with the thumb so you don't need to move your hand at all.
- eikenberry 9y agoI've used a Kinesis for years and have found my favorite 'mouse' pairing to be a Kensington Slimblade. Switching to the trackball made a big difference for my RSI and it really sits pretty nicely next to the keyboard to let you switch to it with a small movement of your arm so my wrist always stays in a nice neutral position.
- kps 9y agoSame combination here. I tried many mice before settling on the Slimblade trackball. Since this is a vim-inspired thread: among other mappings, I swap Escape with Delete, and swap ↓ with ↑ so they line up with J and K.
- hultner 9y agoWith delete seems exotic, doesn’t it get confusing? I use caps-lock for escape. It’s really nice but whenever I use a coworkers computer I find myself suddenly writing with caps-lock on even though I’m the only vi-user at the office.
- eikenberry 9y agoThis is on a Kinesis keyboard where there is a delete key right under the left thumb. I re-mapped it to Alt, but it is a very handy spot to remap to something as delete just isn't that useful.
- charleslmunger 9y agoI have a vertical mouse, but install vim keybindings in every program I use with any frequency. I don't use the mouse often.
- jsjohnst 9y agoWhat do you use for vim bindings in a browser?
- 9y ago
- tetha 9y agoBeen a user of a Microsoft Natural, then switched to a Kinesis Freestyle, and now I've migrated to an ergodox. They are not curved like the Kinesis Advantage are, but I have really long arms and the ability to move both keyboard parts around is so good on my elbows and wrists. As per mouse, I have been looking at trackballs, but I was kinda scared to get one so far. Having large hands, I previously used a Razer Mad Cat, because I could adjust the mouse to a size so I don't have to grab inwards, and I could just hold it without effort. That thing recently broke, and I changed to a slightly angled, equally large trust mouse.
- xupybd 9y agoI have a kinesis advantage and an ergodox. It might just be my preference but the advantage is worlds better. It’s just so much more comfortable. I’d highly recommend trying one.
- linsomniac 9y agoI also picked the Ergodox over the Kinesis, though I only tried the Kinesis for a day. I had spent 10+ years working nomad style on a Thinkpad, and when I got a desk I got one of those USB Thinkpad keyboards with the trackpoint in it. Turns out if you zap them with static 2-3 times a day for a couple years, they'll eventually stop working... One day it just up and died, and a co-worker had the Advantage and Ergodox Ez and I'd been meaning to try them. I had switched to a tiling window manager a few years before that, i3, so I could do a lot of the navigation without using the mouse. I've at times toyed with the idea of putting a trackpoint in the Ergodox, and if they made one I'd probably buy it, but I'm pretty happy with my current setup. For most navigation I use my keyboard. Since I have 3 monitors, using the mouse is not a great experience anyway. I mostly use the mouse for web browsers (never really been happy with the mouseless navigation experience there). Love the Ergodox Ez. I've also got an Ergodox Infinity with Cherry Brown, I kind of prefer those keys, but I like the Ez's tenting kit. I also picked up an Ez with Gaetron Blue, which is honestly too loud for my work environment and doesn't feel enough better to be worth it. My normal keyboard is Ez with Gaetron Brown. I just noticed they have a new Ez that has switches you can remove and replace (without a soldering iron), and they have switched to Cherry. A good move, IMHO.
- shocks 9y agoI tried a vertical mouse, but settled on a Kensington Orbit Trackball. Works well. With my Kinesis Advantage forget pair programming; except with those in the office I have converted to the Kinesis Advantage of course!
- miguelrochefort 9y agoI use a Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan [1] alongside my Kinesis Advantage. [1] https://www.amazon.ca/Logitech-Cordless-Trackman-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B00006B9CR https://www.amazon.ca/Logitech-Cordless-Trackman-Discontinue...
- andriesm 9y agoI can completely replace my mouse with the keyboard so I never even have to take my hands off the keys. I use karabiner on 2 versions older of macOS, which allows you to use a special keyboard way to control the mouse... You hold the D-key then use other letter keys to move the mouse up,down, left, right, click, scroll up, scroll down etc... Works so much better than you'd expect. It literally allows me to do everything including screensnap selections, making keypoints without mouse etc. Because karabiner doesn't work on latest macos, I've been busy writing my own replacement from scratch. I did also initially start by mounting a trackpad in the middle of the kinesis - but ultimately this isn't perfect. My mouse keys setup simply blows everything away, even compared to just using a regular trackpad for most things, since you never take your hand off the keyboard, and can get about 70 percent as fast using the keyboard as mouse as using a real trackpad.
- tcoff91 9y agoCould you possibly share your project? That sounds very intriguing. I have been trying to eliminate the mouse but have been unsuccessful.
- andriesm 9y agoMy own code works almost as well as Karabiner. My code is in such a disorganized state, I have never coded MAC stuff before, this was my first try, creating a test project scaffold with xcode. I mixed old school C-code with objective C because I don't know objective C ;-> Finally I manually injected my compiled binary into another app's package structure, just to make it work. You have to grant it accessibility permissions in preferences to work! For now I have downgraded my MacOS-X and gone back onto Karabiner, because I literally refuse to work with computers without this awesome thing. It takes a bit of time to get fast and accurate, but eventually it is all just muscle memory moving a pointer around on the screen. Some stuff with keyboard-mouse is even better than normal mouse(trackpad). But overall I am so happy with it that I do video editing and all other document editing with it, and wouldn't dream of going back to my trackpad or mouse. (I also get RSI pains from using pointing devices, but as I say, it is devine to never lift your hands OFF your Kinesis Advantage keyboard). I suspect part of what makes this really great is using it on the Kinesis. When I work on the train on my MBP I still use mouse-keys, but sometimes use the trackpad intermittently. I would really recommend trying Karabiner if you have an older mac, otherwise I could email you a binary. I will probably clean up the project, and use fancier tecniques like direct hardware access from user-space instead of the eventtapper, and copy some tricks from Karabiner-elements. Eventually I will create a github and maybe a project site ;-> If by the time I am somehow forced to upgrade MacOS and there still isn't a good solution out there, I will certainly make mine work, otherwise I am screwed!
- z0r 9y agoA totally different direction from the Kinesis, but this has kept me happy for the past 5 years: http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/96U1114 http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/96U1114 There are trackball buttons on the top of the keyboard. When using it, my right hand curls around the corner and my thumb is over the trackball. I have the 2nd mouse button set to scroll-lock, and scrolling up and down web pages and through terminal histories never felt better.
- zwayhowder 9y agoI invested last year in two Elecom left handed trackballs (find them on Amazon). One at work and one at home.
- adkafka 9y agoI use my Kinesis Advantage keyboard with an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 next to it, and it works perfectly! I had some issues with RSI a couple years ago, and this keyboard has helped me get over it.
- xenomachina 9y agoI use a CST L-Trac (trackball) on the left side of my Kinesis Advantage. I'm right handed, but my right hand also had worse problems than my left. I figured if I was going to switch to using my left hand for pointing device, I might as well try switching to a trackball as well. I'd actually started with a Kensington Expert Mouse (also a trackball, despite the name). I switched to the CST because it has a higher resolution. The one thing I didn't like about the CST was the placement of the middle button, but the CST is easily hackable so I added a "sidecar" with a button for my thumb, and it works really well. Here's a photo of my setup: http://i.imgur.com/PYZpWyr.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PYZpWyr.jpg
- drewm1980 9y agoI stuck a Cirque touchpad in the middle of the keyboard. I use that mainly for window switching with focus following cursor in I3. It's not that great for pointing, so I usually have a regular mouse on the side for web browsing.
- copperx 9y agoThe kinesis pedals require the foot to move which is requires a lot of energy which produces a lag of about 1 second between you wanting to press a key and pressing it with your foot. This lag turned me off pedals, but in theory it sounds great.
- bdamm 9y agoIndeed, a pedal sounds tiresome, unless the switch pressure could be tuned so that the foot could be relaxed and require only a small pressure to activate the switch(es).
- yangyang 9y agoThe trouble is tuning it so that you don't need to actively hold your foot to prevent it actuating, and also having enough feedback on actuation. I felt that some kind of wireless, in-shoe, toe-activated device might be the best option. But that's not really very practical!
- tfha 9y agoProbably not, the toes really aren't built for fine motor action the way the fingers are. You would probably get RSI pretty quickly. You'd want to stick to motions that are more typical, such as stepping the foot.
- dharmab 9y agoThat makes me think of motorcycle foot levers, where the back of your foot is supported by and pivots around a peg, allowing you to comfortable and quickly push the lever down.
- lsc 9y agohm. Yes, and with a pretty significant (by keyboard button standards) amount of pressure required. Actually, in a situation where I can't require significant force, the 'upshift' almost seems like it would be more comfortable.