[hjk05]

I’d love to hear your take on the nonsensical shape and staggered key layout. Do you have suggestions for keyboards that do away with this?

I have myself been looking at https://ergodox-ez.com/ but I’d love to hear of alternatives, especially if you have first hand experience on them.

[Asooka]

Hi, I have experience both with the ergodox and the now-discontinued Truly Ergonomic Computer Keyboard™. The TECK honestly has a slightly better layout for me - the two halves are closer together and seem to fit my hands just a bit better. On the downside, the TECK's hardware quality was atrocious with keys double-pressing or missing presses after about a year of use. It also uses its own microcontroller with its own closed-source firmware so there's nearly no community around it. I'm not sure I can politely explain just how much the TECK fails.

The ErgoDox on the other hand has been a joy to use for approximately a year now and its design allowing for wasy swapping of keyswitches plus its open-source firmware mean I have limitless customisability and am not stuck using low-quality chinese cherry-mx clones (kailh). I hear they've actually improved now, but the ones in the TECK were definitely subpar.

I use a split ortholinear keyboard because a standard layout keyboard makes my fingers hurt after a while. ErgoDox and TECK(while it worked) were both good enough for mitigating my problems while not being as exotic and unwieldy as a kinesis.

I would love to try out a https://shop.keyboard.io/ once (hopefully) the price comes down a bit.

[pault]

As an avid mechanical keyboard hobbyist with an enormous collection of MX variants (I have 10 ortholinear keyboards in various stages of construction in my living room right now, and about 80 models of switches from various manufacturers), I would argue that kailh had surpassed cherry in quality and selection by a wide margin in recent years. You really should give them another try.

[aasasd]

> I’d love to hear your take

Well, I guess you already noticed that regular keyboards are made for people with arms growing from the front of their chests. Some, like MS, now generously provide some angle between the halves so people with shoulder-mounted arms can curve them in more comfortably without keeping the wrists crooked.

Now, let's take the flat profile, specifically crosswise the keyboard. It seems greatly suited for people with digits extendable in the plane of the wrist. But where I am, fingers mostly rotate on joints instead.

While we're here, feeble attempts at wrist support on most current boards don't have much respect from me. MS at least made the board incline the other way, which is vastly better (though I'd like some forearm support now).

As for the staggered key layout, it works sort of okay for the left hand where the key columns are staggered to the right (going away from the user). Now, which way are they staggered under the right hand? Also to the right. Meanwhile my fingers mostly move forward and backward in line with each forearm, so I'd imagine ortholinear layout to be more reasonable.

Kinesis Advantage and Maltron boards seem to get all of this right, but I'm yet to buy one.

I'm not sure about the next point, but apparently in the ‘palms down’ position the bones in the forearm are rotated DNA-style, which may or may not be suboptimal. Some boards, like Kinesis Freestyle, can be mounted in a vertical accordion-arrangement, and there are also mice that are handled like joysticks.

The sad thing is, while plastic boards could probably be manufactured in any shape you'd like (at least other gadgets don't seem to have a big problem), prevailing designs are seemingly dictated by the inertia of the market instead of the ergonomics, so they still hold on to ideas of typewriter design from a century ago. And better designs are caught in the bog of higher prices because no mass production for these weird things.

[aasasd]

> okay for the left hand where the key columns are staggered to the right

Got this one backwards on the phone. It's to the left, under both hands.

[ganonm]

I've been using the Ergodox EZ for over a year now and it is life-changing. The ergonomic benefits are huge and it forces you to learn to touch type properly.

I went through 20 iterations to find a layout optimised for using Vim in Ubuntu - feel free to check it out.

https://github.com/Ganon-M/ergodox-vim-ubuntu

[neurotrace]

I'd like to second the sentiment. My only complaint about my new job is that I can't bring my Ergodox (we have strict security requirements on external hardware due to handling sensitive medical data). At my last job, I used it every day for about a year. It's an absolute dream come true.

[thanatropism]

I have a Kinesis Advantage.

Cons: it's a bit expensive, considerably bulky and annoyingly (for workmates) noisy since it has a big volume of air between the halves of the keyboard; it's overkill for most situations where you're going to be browsing an watching Netflix.

Pros: it looks like a fucking spaceship (I'm not a habitual use of F-bombs), teaches you proper typing by separating the keys you're supposed to press with the left and right hands (this lives on even when you work with other keyboards); has such a long key travel that your hands don't hurt when typing in a hurry/hammering the keys with intensity, but actually fires before half of that travel, which makes typing certain combinations with pinkies and ringfingers easy and comfortable.

It's a great keyboard, but it's too much for most people methinks.

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Edit: from the pictures the Ergodox is very close to a non-bulky kinesis except for the concave bowl design of the keyboard halves; it's great for resting your hands and arms solidly. But I have an unused Kinesis at home because it doesn't fit my desk concept; this would fit the bill nicely.