4 ms·

I'll throw my vote in for the Kinesis Advantage along with the others. It made a huge difference, especially for Emacs pinky. The thumb keys are wonderful and m

by cfallin 13y ago

I'll throw my vote in for the Kinesis Advantage along with the others. It made a huge difference, especially for Emacs pinky. The thumb keys are wonderful and make so much more sense than wasting both thumbs on a spacebar. As a datapoint, when I switched cold-turkey, it took about a week to be passable (~40wpm) and another week or two to get up to normal speed (~100wpm). The letter keys in the bowls actually aren't so bad; the harder part for me was retraining the control keys and punctuation. It's totally worth it though, and IMHO much easier than a full layout retraining (e.g. Dvorak, which I've given up on twice).

was_hellbanned 13y ago
>Dvorak, which I've given up on twice I learned Dvorak before switching to the Kinesis. I was only able to do it by having some strategic down-time in my job, and I would say it took around a full year before I was even close to my old QWERTY speed. I can now switch between QWERTY (laptop) and DVORAK (desktop) with only an occasional hitch. Take it from me: the advantage of Dvorak pales in comparison to the advantage of a good keyboard. Add in the fact that the whole world (games, vim, cut/copy/paste) revolves around QWERTY, and Dvorak starts to lose its luster. (Come to think of it, the biggest plus for me with Dvorak is that I can left-hand mouse and hit copy/paste/undo with my right hand...)
- Kuiper 13y ago
  I've found Colemak to be a nice alternative that avoids may of the Dvorak pitfalls you mentioned. The z, x, c, v, and w keys are in the same position they are in QWERTY layout, meaning that the common shortcuts for functions like cut, copy, paste, undo, close tab, are unchanged. Perhaps more importantly, the punctuation remains unchanged, which I consider to be a plus for programmers, who regularly need to make use of brackets of various kinds. (I feel it's worth noting that the Dvorak layout was created in 1936, and probably did not take the syntax of modern programming languages into account.) Because Colemak has more overlap with the QWERTY keyboard, the learning curve is much more gentle; it took me about 2 weeks to get up to around 50% of my old QWERTY WPM, and probably less than 3 months to get where I felt I could match my old WPM. By 1 month in I felt that I was efficient enough with Colemak that it was worth it to type a bit slower in exchange for the increase in comfort it afforded. I've found that the biggest inefficiency that came with the transition was not physical, but mental. During the early weeks of learning the new layout, I needed to actually devote some conscious thought to what my fingers are doing, meaning that those brain cycles couldn't be used to process what I was about to type next, leading to a process where I frequently needed to pause and think about what I was typing, whereas it's typically more continuous and interruption-free as my fingers try to keep up with my brain. During the first few weeks of transitioning, I used Colemak only for "clerical" tasks like writing emails and some documentation I was working on at the time, and not for coding.
neoflame 13y ago
Question for the Kinesis folks: does the height bother you at all? I've been considering buying a Kinesis Advantage, but in a comfortable seating position, with my forearms and thighs level with the ground, there's not much space between my arms and legs. I'm currently using a relatively short keyboard, on a keyboard tray, at work, and already find myself bumping the keyboard tray with my legs fairly frequently.
- clarry 13y ago
  My forearms are tilted upwards very slightly; the kinesis is indeed a bit "high" and my desk has no keyboard tray, nor is the height adjustable. It does bother me in the sense that I would prefer to have my forearms level or tilted slightly downwards. On the other hand, it doesn't feel like my setup is causing any actual discomfort or ergonomic problems.
- travisb 13y ago
  I use my Advantage directly on my legs without a keyboard tray. In that configuration the height of the Advantage is very nearly optimal. At least for me, it naturally puts my arms into an ergonomically suggested posture with my arms straight down, bent to approximately ninety degrees, my wrists held straight onto the palm rests.

by cfallin 13y ago

was_hellbanned 13y ago

>Dvorak, which I've given up on twice I learned Dvorak before switching to the Kinesis. I was only able to do it by having some strategic down-time in my job, and I would say it took around a full year before I was even close to my old QWERTY speed. I can now switch between QWERTY (laptop) and DVORAK (desktop) with only an occasional hitch. Take it from me: the advantage of Dvorak pales in comparison to the advantage of a good keyboard. Add in the fact that the whole world (games, vim, cut/copy/paste) revolves around QWERTY, and Dvorak starts to lose its luster. (Come to think of it, the biggest plus for me with Dvorak is that I can left-hand mouse and hit copy/paste/undo with my right hand...)

Kuiper 13y ago
I've found Colemak to be a nice alternative that avoids may of the Dvorak pitfalls you mentioned. The z, x, c, v, and w keys are in the same position they are in QWERTY layout, meaning that the common shortcuts for functions like cut, copy, paste, undo, close tab, are unchanged. Perhaps more importantly, the punctuation remains unchanged, which I consider to be a plus for programmers, who regularly need to make use of brackets of various kinds. (I feel it's worth noting that the Dvorak layout was created in 1936, and probably did not take the syntax of modern programming languages into account.) Because Colemak has more overlap with the QWERTY keyboard, the learning curve is much more gentle; it took me about 2 weeks to get up to around 50% of my old QWERTY WPM, and probably less than 3 months to get where I felt I could match my old WPM. By 1 month in I felt that I was efficient enough with Colemak that it was worth it to type a bit slower in exchange for the increase in comfort it afforded. I've found that the biggest inefficiency that came with the transition was not physical, but mental. During the early weeks of learning the new layout, I needed to actually devote some conscious thought to what my fingers are doing, meaning that those brain cycles couldn't be used to process what I was about to type next, leading to a process where I frequently needed to pause and think about what I was typing, whereas it's typically more continuous and interruption-free as my fingers try to keep up with my brain. During the first few weeks of transitioning, I used Colemak only for "clerical" tasks like writing emails and some documentation I was working on at the time, and not for coding.

neoflame 13y ago

Question for the Kinesis folks: does the height bother you at all? I've been considering buying a Kinesis Advantage, but in a comfortable seating position, with my forearms and thighs level with the ground, there's not much space between my arms and legs. I'm currently using a relatively short keyboard, on a keyboard tray, at work, and already find myself bumping the keyboard tray with my legs fairly frequently.

clarry 13y ago
My forearms are tilted upwards very slightly; the kinesis is indeed a bit "high" and my desk has no keyboard tray, nor is the height adjustable. It does bother me in the sense that I would prefer to have my forearms level or tilted slightly downwards. On the other hand, it doesn't feel like my setup is causing any actual discomfort or ergonomic problems.
travisb 13y ago
I use my Advantage directly on my legs without a keyboard tray. In that configuration the height of the Advantage is very nearly optimal. At least for me, it naturally puts my arms into an ergonomically suggested posture with my arms straight down, bent to approximately ninety degrees, my wrists held straight onto the palm rests.