Around 2 years ago now, I took the plunge and bought myself an Ergodox EZ split island keyboard. Quite franky, it is the biggest quantum leap in the ergonomic experience of interacting with a computer I have seen since learning Vim. It is comfortable, effortless and fast. If you spend any significant time interacting with computers it is a complete no brainer to invest in optimising the IO channel between your brain and the machine.
Here is a link to my keyboard layout which you can freely use. It is optimised for Vim and Ubuntu use.
> it is a complete no brainer to invest in optimising the IO channel between your brain and the machine
Why? You'll never even double the "throughput" of that "channel", let alone improve it by an order of magnitude.
And I say this as someone who wasted lots of time and money attempting exactly that before I realized that typing is not what I spend most of my time doing while programming.
It's not just about improving the bandwidth (although that is nice), the one thing I wouldn't trade that the Ergodox gives me is a very low error rate in typing. This is hard to achieve with a traditional keyboard, especially when you starting throwing special characters into the mix that require two-handed contortions.
I've heard the refrain "you don't spend most of your time typing when programming" so many times it's almost become a trope. I personally spend enough time typing during a typical day (working or otherwise) that I really appreciate the benefits of a highly optimised keyboard setup, although of course YMMV. I don't think the argument holds water.
It's not the bandwidth per se, so much it's the continuous attention cost spent on keeping that bandwidth going.
Better tactile feedback and more reliable input means I don't have to constantly multitask half a task worth of attention onto making sure the input I think I'm doing went off as intended, which makes it easier to concentrate on the main task, which reduces the build up of fatigue, which reduces the rate at which the cost of mental effort increases throughout the day.
Which is not to mention things like the chance of getting hand cramps from the additional tension there caused by interacting with a less reliable keyboard, and by the tendency to use excess input force in attempt to get strokes through more consistently.
By my read y'all need more practice typing, not a fancy expensive ergo keyboard. Other than the occasional hand cramps this lifelong nerd doesn't have any of those problems on this old, mushy MS natural.
I thought so too untill I started having RSI/CTS issues. I've since switched to a 'fancy expensive ergo keyboard'. And it fantastic, I'm about as fast as I was on a traditional qwerty, but with less errors. However most importantly I have far less RSI/CTS complaints when typing on my redox than I do with a non-split (even ergo non-splits). My arms are in a far more natural position and so is my wrist thanks to the tenting and tilting I can do with the redox.
So if you are typing a lot, I would recommend getting an ergo before you start having issues.
For reference I could type about a paragraph in one go on a regular keyboard, now I can type an entire page before I start having pains/cramps.
Jumping in to chime in on this. I developed issues a few months ago, then swapped over to the ergodox, and my daily pains stopped. If you can't afford the ergodox, I also found the Microsoft Sculpt worked wonder. I picked up a used one on eBay and it's been great.
I use a Sculpt as my work keyboard and, while fantastic, have you had any issues with the range of the wireless transmitter? I feel like it doesnt go beyond a couple of inches unless it's plugged into a powered USB hub -- even then it still occasionally drops keypresses
Totally agree. I never realized this until one day it started hurting to do work which really took the wind out of my sails. Adjusting my setup to better compensate for eye strain and rsi related issues really helped.
Unrelated to parent topic, but related to your comment on eyestrain, I have found that using f.lux to change the color temperature of my monitors to match the fluorescent lighting in my office (with a color temperature of 4200K) to do wonders for alleviating eyestrain.
Changing the temp on my monitor and making additional adjustments to my workspace helped. However, thank you for the suggestion. I had previously known this as a mac only software.
Fully agreed. I am very thankful that I took typewriting classes when I was younger. I do not think it is a coincidence that I also do not have trouble with keyboards being difficult to type on, unlike 90%+ of the folks I work with. Just plain putting in the hours of practice on proper form may not be a very exciting answer, but I can't think of a more effective one.
I agree 100% with you on this. My first year of high-school we had a typing class on an IBM Selectric keyboard. Our teacher was a wizened old secretary that for a considerable portion of her career used a non-electric typewriter.
What has always stayed with me was her guidance on posture and form. The 'piano style'* on which she insisted is almost completely contrary to modern ergonomic teachings, and yet I can say almost 40-years later; still works and is effective.
I readily admit that I'm probably lucky too in that I don't follow that guidance to the T, I do however follow the basic form of it. This anecdote simply agrees with your statement.
*: 'piano style' wrists higher then knuckles, finger-tips hovering/barely touching home-row, back straight
It might be a consumer perception issue, either relating to the inexpensive (relatively) price or the Microsoft brand that keeps users away from the Natural versus other more complex designs.
Agreed. That statement is one of those catty oft repeated things we are supposed to take as gospel for some reason.
Personally: I spend ALL DAY typing. Configurations, code, documentation, tutorials, arguments for doing things one way or another, user stories for work, chatting with my coworkers, running cli commands.
I see a huge difference in my productivity between myself and my peers partly due to my faster text input and editing skills.
> I've heard the refrain "you don't spend most of your time typing when programming" so many times it's almost become a trope.
Yeah. Yet, when you switch to a completely different (and maybe not very comfortable) keyboard layout and get slowed down to 50% of your usual speed and make a lot more typos, it just immediately shows how incredibly frustrating coding can get even if typing isn't the primary challenge in it.
Input should flow effortlessly and comfortably. That just makes it easier to focus on the more important stuff.
What an Ergodox lets me do is this: while standing, with good posture, I extend my arms, level with the ground, to where they comfortably and naturally want to be.
Then, I put the keyboards there, adjust the desk up to that height, and put books under the monitor until the center is exactly level with my eyes. Trackball to the right.
This is dramatically more comfortable than anything else I could be doing. It's hard to convey how uncomfortable a straight keyboard is to someone who hasn't tried the alternative.
For me, I notice the difference in my shoulders. They tuck in with a compact keyboard, and then my wrists bow inward. It ends in a slouch and increasing neck pain over time - even my personal laptop makes this noticeable after a short amount of time.
Ergodox EZ may puzzle people with its layout, but the split island part alone has made computing comfortable for me, especially when combined with a sit/stand desk. There's a lot less physical strain to wrestle with, which a bigger difference as time goes on.
OH! I just realized this explains why my right shoulder is lower compared to my left! Every time I take a photo, the photographer always tells me to bring it higher. My neutral position for my mouse!
> It's hard to convey how uncomfortable a straight keyboard is to someone who hasn't tried the alternative.
I've tried split keyboards. They feel unnatural. I feel like I type better/faster when my hands are closer together.
The single greatest thing I've ever done to completely cure RSI pain while typing is eliminating "wrist yaw" - i.e., maintaining a mostly straight line from my elbow to my knuckles. The bonus is that I can type comfortably on any keyboard.
Yep totally agree, in fact sometimes when people see it and ask me questions about it, I suggest they stand at my desk and lay their hands on the two islands. Even without typing a single character they almost invariably react extremely positively to the ergonomic pose.
I defined custom layers so that I can toggle a layer on depending on whether I'm using the keyboard with Chrome OS or Ubuntu Linux. This allows me to use the same shortcuts between the two OSes, while they are otherwise not customizable on Chrome OS. Also, it allows me to use media keys for Chrome OS on a split/ergo keyboard.
Plus as a Vim user, I'm able to use HJKL arrow keys in any app on either OS.
It eliminates frustration. I hate having to look away from the screen, and with a regular keyboard I always have to look down too often, unless I'm writing just prose.
I think folks should not bother trying to justify their keyboard preferences. You're right that it usually makes little difference in terms of productivity.
On the other hand it can be very rewarding to choose something relatively unique for one's keyboard, or even make their own. The keyboard is kind of "intimate". It makes sense to make it yours. Not everything has to be utilitarian.
This differs from one man to the next, as well as by specialty. Some people work better by typing out code quickly, permuting it several different ways, and coming up with a final revision. On the other hand, I sometimes spend ten minutes staring at my screen, then bang out ten lines of code that get something _just right_. However, someone who's more devops/sysadmin focused might type more, as he's piping lots of tools together to filter the output of something, at least from my experience.
I bought a Razer Blackwidow and it makes the experience of typing, whenever I type, a much more pleasant experience. The first time I used it, it almost felt like cutting through butter compared to any keyboard I'd used before. And it will last for tens of millions of keystrokes. I may not type much, but those times where I do, it is beautiful.
I'll be honest, I bought an Ergodox EZ a year or so ago and have consistently struggled to get comfortable using it. I have set up quite a few useful macros for programs I use daily like tmux as well as making it more vim-friendly (after many interations) and yet I still find it a serious chore to get past the fact that the keys feel un-naturally placed. Eventually I just give up and switch back to my laptop keyboard (I'm usually trying to write something and it feels like the keyboard is blocking my natural stream of typing) and so the cycle continues.
I guess my question is -- did everyone else switching to the Ergodox EZ have this problem? And should I just push myself to suffer through it more? Or is it the case that I should revisit my layout (again) to figure out if there's a way to further optimise it so it feels less foreign? One of the really frustrating things is that there isn't a natural place to put fairly common programming key combinations such as "()", "{}", "=+", or "-_" -- does everyone else just use layer toggles for that?
EDIT: Ah, I see your layout makes fairly significant use layer toggles. And you also had trouble with "on-boarding" for the first few weeks -- I guess I just need to force myself to use it then. I might take yours and modify it to add some of the tmux and i3 macros I have defined.
I had a difficult time initially adjusting to my ergodox, a few years back. For the first month or so it felt like I had had a stroke. What worked for me was:
1. Only switching to layers when pressing and holding keys, not having them permanently toggle - otherwise, I find it's very easy to get disoriented and mistake what layer you're on.
2. Not using any common keys as toggles, since the sight delay was driving me insane
3. Probably the biggest one - instead of trying to learn/adjust to the layout you have (especially the default, which I found to have a lot of questionable key placements), whenever you press a key and something other that what you expected to happen happens, adjust your layout to make your original intuition work. This involved a lot of frequent small layout changes initially but I think led to a much less intense learning curve.
Yeah I found it very painful at first (like learning Vim but perhaps 5x times worse). I highly recommend using typing.io to get used to it. Since the training examples are source code, it ensures you get exposed to special characters, which is crucial if you're using your ergodox for programming.
As you can see from the table on my GitHub page, progress was slow and took several weeks to reach baseline levels. This was from maybe 45-60mins per day of dedicated practice. I see the time investment as having paid for itself tenfold already.
I also switched to an Ergodox EZ (about 2 years ago), and the switch was very painful. At first, my speed was divided by 2.
Using some typing practice, I managed to get to my usual speed on a normal keyboard and then thought: good, now I can definitely remove my old keyboard for good. My god this was wrong:
When typing what I saw before me, my brain could dedicate 100% to typing, and this was fine.
But when programming, or even writing an email, part of my brain must concentrate on the content, and my typing what very laborious, maybe half of the normal speed, with many errors. This was taxing much of my mental energy.
I kept on for a at least one month of typing practice before really making a permanent switch.
It was hard, but I do not regret it at all.
Worth noting: I thinkered with the layout quite a bit. Even moving one special character somewhere else could take me a full day to adjust, and it was painful. So I finally settled on a good, but probably not optimal layout.
As some other comment above, I do not use common keys as layer keys (something I really wanted to use) because of delays. It is not much, but I experienced much more typing errors with this.
I’ve been using the smaller version (no arrow or function keys) for about a year now. It took a little bit of adjusting to get used to no arrow keys, but it’s a great experience now! The `fn` key could perhaps be better placed, but other than that I have no qualms.
I used to get a lot of back pain, which I realize now was from scrunching my shoulders together to keep my wrists in typing position for X hours per day. The fact that it’s a quality mechanical keyboard (the quietest switches, brown I think, are just fine for an office) is an extra bonus. I’d recommend giving it a try for anybody considering it. It’s a good in-between, being an ergonomic keyboard that isn’t particularly “funky”, in terms of layout.
The build looks reasonably straightforward. I suspect I wouldn't be able to use low-profile switches with this, but I'll fully admit I'm not well versed in keyboard assembly.
Thanks for this. I'm getting closer to what I'm looking for.
I bought an MD650L and found the switches to be unusably bad. I, too, wished for a low-profile Quefrency.
I'm comfortable designing and assembling PCBs but don't really have time to debug a brand-new design, so I've ordered a low-profile Lily58 kit. The Lily58 is most of what I want and has open source PCB, schematic and case. If it doesn't work for me, I'm expecting to modify it to something more like Quefrency.
no pricing info, or anything else to suggest any way to get one of these from what I see. Maybe it's the English version that suffers in this way?
They look cool. If they could make one with no need for wire between the two halves I'd dig deeper on how to get one I suppose.
I wrapped my head around the ergodox by realizing that you have to use layers. It's not supposed to map 1:1 with a regular keyboard.
I use a modified version of the default symbol layer that's more programmer friendly (I think) and I put the toggle for this layer under my right index finger. I feel like I'm more accurate now because it's not just my right pinky doing all the symbol work.
I don't use toggles for these common symbols like /\'[-+] . The trick is that you make the top row as same as a normal keyboard, move ]\ from second row to the bottom row as they seldom get typed (] got auto completion most of the time).
Your mileage may vary! I found it easy and rewarding, other people find the ortholinear layout confusing and struggle to type on it, as some sibling comments show.
The one hitch I hit early on, is that it turns out I type 'y' with the left finger on laptops, and on a stock ErgoDox, that involves hitting a layer button, which of course throws off one's rhythm. I had to turn that key into a dead key until I got used to typing y with my right finger (I still hit it with the left on a laptop).
Hah, the key I struggled with the most was 'b'. My brain was convinced that was a right index-finger key the first couple of weeks using an Ergodox EZ.
The microsoft natural 4000 keyboard is pretty standard except split in the middle. It's good enough for me, no need to relearn but much better to use. I still get wrist problems but it takes longer.
Haven't tried the Ergodox, but had bad experiences with thumb keys on both a Kinesis Advantage and a Keyboardio.
Then I tried the ultimate hacking keyboard and I absolutely love it, especially the mouse emulation layer. And it took me way less to get used to it compared to the above two. I can't recommend it enough!
Writing Rust in Dvorak on an EZ Ergo for a living is next-level techno-paradise to many a nerd. Kudos for that!
Also, if by any chance you feel like sharing details about how, and in which order you made these transitions; things you wish you knew before trying... please don't hesitate :)
I used Colemak (which is similar to Dvorak) and I would really recommend learning it if you don't already touch type. It does involve a little bit of pain at first and you'll feel really tempted to go back but in a week I was already fast enough to do useful work. I'm not a speed demon by any means, I type at the same speed I did before (60 wpm) except now I don't need to look at the keyboard which is very convenient in ways I didn't realize would be possible before. For example now it's much easier for me to take notes in a meeting or class because I can keep my eyes on the subject.
The worst part was having to relearn keyboard shortcuts, so I don't know if I'd recommend it to an emacs or vim user.
Thanks a lot! I've searched a bit based on what you said and sort of found a point of entry into Colemak. It's very enticing. I'm not a touch typist yet (use all fingers but quite inconsistently I suppose, yet 'fast enough' for me and without looking).
Would it be sensible to make such a 'dramatic' layout change at the same time as the switch to a split ortholinear such as the EZ? It seems more straightforward to do it all at once, but also taking quite the tall order at once — ortho + colemak + strict touch typing.
I think it would be sensible to make all the changes together.
If you already type e.g. T with the wrong hand, then it's annoying to start typing it with the correct hand (because it's on the other side of the split), then learn a new location with a new layout.
(Do also consider Dvorak. The difference is not really worth an argument, but at least with a programmable mechanical keyboard one of the main advantages -- that Control Z/X/C/V remain in place -- can be kept with Dvorak with a small adjustment to the layout. I've never tried Colemak, but I do like the hand alternation design of Dvorak, and I think I would miss it.)
Thanks for the advice/perspective; it definitely helped me decide how to proceed.
I'll definitely make all changes at once, then. I'll experiment with both Dvorak and Colemak for the letter keys.
Shorcuts are not much of a problem for me, extensive MMO raid gaming in my teen-20's made sure of that.
I miss AutoHotKey (AHK, windows program) very much, haven't found anything to remap keyboard inputs so extensively and granularly on Linux. KDE helps a lot, but nowhere near enough for my taste. I'm very excited for the EZ Oryx firmware tool in that regard, as it may replace AHK (and whatever it can't do yet, I can probably program, which is sweet).
The one thing I wonder about as a colemak user is should I have opted for a fully optimised layout instead? Having the common keys stay the same as qwerty was convenient while learning colemak but really isn’t necessary after a few weeks. I don’t regret choosing colemak though because it’s got good OS support (cones built in with Linux and OSX) while the fully optimised layouts typically have to be manually installed. I’ve been a happy colemak user for about 8 years now and couldn’t imagine still using qwerty.
I’m an unhappy vim Colemak user. I remapped HJKL to NEIO, which implied some other changes (particularly needing to find new keys for N and I), and now I never know what keys to press because I can’t keep track of whether I’m using a local vim with all my settings. Touch typing on Qwerty and Colemak is no problem, but changing my vim habits is much more difficult, I suppose because I don’t think as much about the letters when I’m not using them to spell out words.
I experimented with changing the config so that the vim keys remain in the same physical qwerty locations and I suppose if you have super strong muscle memory for vim commands it probably makes sense to do that, but I didn’t so ultimately decided not to remap keys. Yes my hjkl are in weird locations, but I actually got used to it quit quickly (and on my kinesis advantage, I just use the cursor keys since their in reach).
Used to map navigation to AltGr+u/n/e/i (for up down left right), so qwerty i/k/j/l which was a suoer comfortable way for me to navigate (left thumb on AltGr and then wasd style cursors) but since I got the kinesis keyboard, I haven’t bothered. I do still use windows key + unei for navigating in i3
Non-Qwerty layouts are probably much better for Emacs users, at least if they know the somewhat dated names for the commands: most of the letters are chosen (if at all) for their initial, rather than their position.
Moving the cursor Forward, Backward, Previous line, Next line is Ctrl+F/B/P/N, which doesn't involve learning anything new when changing layouts. "Paste" is actually "yank", so that's Ctrl+Y.
I used to use an Ergodox Infinity that I built from a kit. Since then I've moved to the Model 01 from https://keyboard.io
Why? I find the thumb clusters way better, I feel like they're just a bit too far away on the ergodox keyboards. That, and the shape of the keys and the curve of the stagger are better IMO.
The downside is you can't use any keycaps because they're unique to this keyboard.
I tried an ergodox after years with a kinesis advantage, end of the day it was just worse. Finally put a custom controller in my advantages flashed them with qmk and custom keymaps and sold off the ergodox.
But I'm not planning to switch because it will make me unlearn all the traditional keyboards for me. In particular, I will have trouble touch-typing on a laptop keyboard after that, and there are zero options for an Ergodox-like layout on a commercially available laptop. So, no way to work on a train or a plane.
I wish some laptop maker were so brave as to offer a split and angled keyboard as an option on a laptop with decent internals, though.
I also use an (QWERTY) ergodox, and I'm fine jumping back and forth between normal keyboards and the ergodox. I'd say budget 2-3 weeks to get comfortable on the ergodox, and then another 2-3 weeks before you're comfortable jumping between it and normal keyboards again.
If only there was an Ergodox keycap set with all printed keys. I used an Ergodox EZ from when it was delivered after the crowdfunding campaign, right until the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard delivered on its campaign, and I stuck with the UHK mostly because all keys are labeled. I post this every time there is a thread about the Ergodox in the hope there will be keycap sets available some day...
The keys are not profiled (they are all the same shape, rather than having different heights for each row), so except for the F and J (which have homing dips) they are interchangeable.
Alternatively, there are the geeky custom sets, like https://candykeys.com/group-buys/kat-milkshake , which sometimes support Ergo/Orth layouts. They can be less flexible (if they keycaps are profiled), and they will be considerably more expensive.
I actually put this in my Ali Express basket last week, but I'm still on the fence about actually ordering it or not. My experiences with Ali Express key caps are hit and miss. Then again I probably shouldn't be posting complaints about key cap sets online and then not try every option out there.
I also have an Ergodox EZ. It is in fact revolutionary. Just being able to move keys around was so helpful for me. I have ({}) on jkl;, for example (shifted with a key below V...). Symbols are much more comfortable to type, and frequent operations like backspace and enter are on my pointer fingers or thumbs, so I'm not straining my pinky all day.
The Ergodox is not perfect, though. I think it has too many thumb keys (blindly copying Kinesis); they take up space but you can't really take advantage of them. Going from a staggered layout to ortholinear was quite the struggle for me. I endured and "got it", but I know a lot of people aren't going to have the patience.
Ultimately I like this article because it shows that hand-wired keyboards are quite practical. The author went overboard making it look nice, but you can build yourself a very nice keyboard with an Arduino, some switches, diodes, and wire, and a 3D printer. It won't look as nice, but you can get every single detail perfect.
The biggest mistake of my adult life, in my opinion, is that I didn’t buy a good keyboard sooner. I Kinesis Advantage2 now (with a foot pedal for shift), but I almost bought one ten years earlier, but didn’t because of the cost. I really wish I had.
Most of us here on HN spend so much of our lives typing that we really should invest in good tools, especially for comfort. I rely on my hands so much that I feel like spending $300 to protect them from RSI and to improve typing comfort and accuracy is a no brainier. I think anybody who types a lot should get an ergonomic split keyboard with mechanical switches (and learn to not bottom the keys out). Your hands will thank you. A once off cost of $300ish is really not that much compared to discomfort or injury.
complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed. You use it for how many hours of the day if you're a programmer/engineer? Maybe it's worth spoiling yourself.
Precisely, although I don't think it's spoiling yourself. You use some things a whole lot that it makes sense to spend comparatively more on them than you would on "normal" items:
* Bed
* Office chair
* Keyboard and mouse
* Monitors
* Footwear
* Cooking basics like a couple of knives and a pan or two.
"At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.
Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet."
Perhaps a modernized/realistic version would be "you can spend $200 on pizza ten times in a year, or you can spend the same on a couple of knives and second-hand stainless steel pans. At the end of the year, you may have some excess body fat depending on activity level, or some good useful cookware" (or something, I dunno, I'm never going to be as smart or eloquent as Terry Pratchett GNU)
Your list of "Bed, Office chair, Keyboard and mouse, Monitors, Cooking basics like ... a pan or two." (all except footwear) aligns very well with my list of "things that don't fit on a plane".
Unfortunately my life isn't stable enough to invest in something that I can't carry with me when I have to move. It's luxuries like these that I've often had to go without entirely (having a chair and desk is so nice compared to using a laptop on a mat on the floor). If immigration were easier, I'd have already settled down, but instead it's been 8 years and counting living like this. I really hope my pending resident visa application comes through this time, so I can start investing in things like those.
They do, however, fit in a shipping container. By the time you paid for all of these things, shipping them is a lot cheaper than buying them all again.
Shipping takes several months, and assumes I know the address in the destination before I set off. By the time a shipping container would arrive, I'd already have been there for 90 days, and need to leave again.
Tbh, cheap(er) keyboards don't necessarily are unreliable and fall under that theory. I'm mildy interested in buying a fancy keyboard, but the Logitech I bought in highschool refuses to die...
Your keyboard, like the AK-47 rifle and the UN26 bottom bracket, is an interesting exception to the Vimes theory. Cheap, unsophisticated, but virtually indestructible.
I'm not sure if there's a common mechanism by which things like that come to be. Possibly that they are designed for customers who are buying in bulk for use by other people (cubicle drones, PBI, buyers of assembled bikes), and who have a vested interest in reliability.
Something I hadn't quite considered: a 2000-something Logitech is cheap by todays standards, but back then Logitech was covered the range from affordable to high-end (Gaming keyboards with screens for maybe ~$100-130?), probably didn't make much really cheap ones, and likely didn't want to skimp to much on the cheaper models and ruin their reputation for the expensive ones. They weren't cheap enough for the effect to "trigger".
Yep. I got pretty into keyboards this year and ended up spending over $500 and probably 50 hours on research, key switches, key caps, soldering, firmware programming, and learning Colemak and ortholinear layouts. I enjoyed the process, but it would be pretty difficult to argue that it was a worthwhile investment on purely pragmatic grounds. When you spend $200 on a keyboard, you’re inclined to spend hours fixing it when there are problems (which every custom-built keyboard has) rather than just dropping $20 on a new one. I’m not getting any of that time back and I’m not any faster at typing.
It's the same as spending $10k on a mattress - it's just dumb. Yes you spend a lot of time in it, but after a certain point you're spending money to feed someone's marketing, not paying for any tangible benefit.
I never get the more expensive product unless it's obviously or provably better. Baseline assumption is that quality is the same and they just want more money.
> complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed.
except it isn't a great keyboard when compared with standard keyboards, and its value proposition is absurd when taken into account that standard keyboards cost around 10€ and ergonomic keyboards by reference brands such as Microsoft go for about 50€.
I've used the €50 keyboard; it's certainly better than the €5 keyboard (at retail) that ships with most desktops, but it's still not anywhere near as good as a Kinesis or Maltron, the cost of either is less than 1‰ (so a rounding error of a rounding error) of the cost of employing me for a year, and they'll last longer than the five-year depreciation period for office equipment.
The kinesis keyboard costs more than some low-end laptops. It's hard to sell the idea that it's ok for a keyboard to cost more than a regular everyday work computer, even if it's price is expressed in coffee cups.
One of my colleagues (a PA, not a developer) has a "Rollermouse Red" which costs $400.
It's an easy sell when the doctor says "you need this to avoid time off work" or similar. More developers should take a preventative approach and invest in ergonomic hardware.
(I'm pretty sure my desk is about $500, and the chair probably similar.)
$500 is a low-end, made-in-China sit/stand desk. For one made in the US with a hardwood top, it could be $2000 or more, not including monitor arms and other useful accessories.
My chair at home actually only cost $500 because it was the store's house brand, but it happened to be the most comfortable. If it weren't for that, I'd have bought an Aeron. A name-brand office chair lists for $1000-$1500, but avoiding a sick day or three due to back pain makes one very +EV, very quickly.
On the other hand, it will outlast many mass-produced low-end laptops made of the cheapest of components.
Mine is still going strong after more than a decade.
Also, these 300 eur laptops are not something I'd consider for everyday work. Way underspecced for a lot of stuff, and generally miserable to work with or carry around.
It's one of those situations where a store front or a friend with the item you're considering helps a lot. My favorite keyboard ever was a Model-M buckling spring keyboard... one year I broke a retainer clip for the spacebar while taking the key caps off to clean it... I decided to toss it, it was probably close to a decade old at that point.
After that for about another decade, I bought a new keyboard each year, often anywhere from $20-50, and it was always disappointing... I'd put up with it for the better part of a year and move on. I'd tried several of the more popular mechanical keyboards, never quite the same.
I then found Unicomp was still making them... though not exactly the same, still really nice imho. I use one of the 103 key models at home. I've since switch to a cherry mx brown das keyboard at work to spare my coworkers the noise. In the end, the $120 or so I spent for a keyboard that's lasted me years is far better than one I've swapped out at least once a year.
I'd probably consider it if I had any signs of RSA or actually liked split keyboards at all. Ironically, moving to a mechanical keyboard with a tactile feel, the RSA symptoms I did have have since gone away. I've still tried several other KBs and styles since then, my only suggestion is stay away from mechanical keyboards under around $80 as they're often knockoff switches that are not as good and don't feel the same.
It's great, and what's not to love if you're a POSIX guy? The Ctrl and Caps Lock keys are swapped, so the Ctrl key is on the home row like God intended. It has buckling spring, positive keyclick action and it's so good if you do a lot of keyboard input or use Vim and/or Emacs. The bottom plate is steel and it's heavy, it won't slide around on my desk.
Sure, for custom mechanical keyboard snobs, the keycaps aren't anything to write home about because sometimes the key characters aren't properly centered on the key surface. But my keycaps look OK, maybe I just happened to get a good one. And it doesn't bother me anyway because I never look at the keys when typing.
Kind of wish I'd started with a keyboard that had the ctrl where the caps lock is... I can see the appeal. One thing I've found from some bad keyboards is I really favor the left ctrl and the right shift, when either of those are out of position it's truly a painful experience for me (notably on many laptops).
You can hop on reddit and resell it on for 50-100 less than you paid for it. This makes the experiment less expensive, and if you're trying to pinch that last penny and have some patience, you could cruise those same forums until one comes up on sale, and sell it off for what you paid for it.
It's not spoiling yourself! What tradesman would buy a 15$ no brand cordless drill that they'll use dozens of times a day? Yes the cheapest one will spin the drill bit when you push the button, just like one 10 or 30 times more expensive - but just the better ergonomics makes it worth it. One aspect of being a professional is using proper tools.
I work with senior developers all around me all day, most of them don't see a reason to spend more than $10 on a keyboard, and mock me constantly whenever I get a typo somewhere about my $150 daskeyboard.
I’ve always assumed that ergonomic beds and keyboards were equal parts snake oil, once you get past the obviously terrible bargain basement stuff. Do you think there’s a meaningful difference?
€10 gets you the cheap keyboard which leads to bad wrist positions, which can contribute to RSI and carpal tunnel.
€60-80 buys a mass-produced ergonomic design, like the Microsoft Ergonomic. These aren't adjustable or programmable, but it's easily a worthwhile improvement.
(Personally, I bought a mechanical keyboard because I don't like the low-travel laptop-style keys that are now standard on the MS Ergonomic and other similar "cheap" ergonomic keyboards.)
€100-150 buys a mass-produced, adjustable, reprogrammable (to some extent) keyboard, like a Kinesis Freestyle. This will help people with wrist issues, and will seem an obvious improvement to anyone who has a Microsoft Ergonomic. It also comes with mechanical keyswitches, which give more options in typing pressure.
€300 buys a sculpted ergonomic keyboard, like the Kinesis Advantage2. I've never used them, but people who have had wrist problems seem to swear by them. They look comfortable to use, if you know how to touch-type in the standard way.
Within this whole range are DIY and small-scale ergonomic keyboards. The price varies a lot depending whether it's self-assembled, self-printed/cut, etc (this obviously makes no difference to the effectiveness of the keyboard), the type of key switches chosen (this makes some difference, but will eventually lead to the kind of discussions one hears about 99.999999999% copper speaker cables where people are spending €2+ per switch) and the key caps (which is 99% appearance).
All of them are fully programmable, and there's potentially a lot of customization possible for tilting, positioning and so on.
The key switches and key caps are independent from whether the keyboard is ergonomic or not, so you can also spend €300+ on an extremely un-ergonomic keyboard with just 50 keys, a milled aluminium case, 8° tilt, no feet, €2 switches and incorrect Japanese key legends with colours taken from a manga. This should be considered art rather than a useful tool.
Adding the €150 Japanese key caps to a €120 kit-built ergonomic keyboard doesn't make it worse, but mine looks good enough with the plain €15 key caps.
Good tools will see you through a job with ease; they pay for themselves. Bad tools will have you hating life and doing a poor job at things. I spend many, many hours at a keyboard, every day. Life is too short to put up with terrible tools.
My current favorite keyboard is about $150, and I would happily pay more because it's a good tool and when things are groovy I hardly notice it's there. I have a couple spares in a closet, because I don't want to spend time retraining.
I don't think it's handmade. It has an injection-molded case, a PCB with surface-mount components that are likely pick-and-place'd, etc. I don't think they build them in quantities comparable to Logitech... but it's basically a mass-produced product.
According to https://ergodox-ez.com/pages/sustainability they make it in an office rather than a factory. Obviously that doesn't rule out a small pick and place machine but it seems less likely.
I believe Adafruit does some of their "manufacturing" in their New York City office. I have seen videos of the pick-and-place machines they have there.
More likely is that Ergodox EZ outsources the PCBs, cases, metal parts, etc. and just do the final assembly themselves. (The keyswitches are socketed, for example, so you just pop those in, put the keycaps on, flash the latest firmware, maybe run a quick test, and ship it out.)
The line can be really blurry these days. Take a tour of the Prusa factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX3pDDi9PeU. Sure, they ship you 3D printed parts... but they have hundreds of 3D printers running 24/7 to meet demand. Is that handmade? Is that mass produced?
I'm on year 5 or 6 with a self built ErgoDox. it's really tough to imagine going back to anything else full time. I ended up building another to keep at home.
Not sure how much it's changed, but I was able to build both of mine <= $200 each.
How do you build one? I'm handy with a soldering iron (and even designing my own PCBs), but I'd still want to not spend more time on it than I have to (e.g. if there is firmware I can just use).
The QMK firmware is pretty simple to get up and running. The wiring is pretty simple too, you have your rows and columns, and then connect each to an input on the microcontroller, and then configure your row/column/key layout in QMK.
It's pretty perplexing, I'm seeing just the PCB go for $50, when you can get that PCB fabbed for $10 from the design. It appears like everyone just marks stuff up at every step, an ergodox-ez costs $300 but around $100 if you assemble it yourself.
Do you have any links to the boards or instructions you used for this? If I'm going to try building a keyboard (which I want to do) it may as well be more ergonomic than my curent one.
I impulse purchased the carrying case they released recently... Tbh not very happy with it. The molded foam inside the case only fits the keyboard but not the silicone wrist rests, which imo are vital. The space efficiency of the case is pretty poor too so it doesn't easily fit in a suitcase or weekend bag. I mostly end up just piling the keyboard into a bag loose.
I’m using an Atreus at the moment and while I enjoyed carrying it around when I was learning the layout, once the novelty wore off it got really old having to pack up the keyboard every day. I’ve switched back to a spare regular keyboard at work as a result. If you want to go all in, be prepared to invest in two keyboards!
Has your conventional keyboard typing suffered significantly? Seems like that might be a problem for laptop use when traveling without the special keyboard.
I use an ergodox as well and I still manage to use my regular keyboard just fine but it feels bad. After drinking the ergonomic kool-aid you notice how awkward normal keyboards can sometimes be.
That being said I've made a script that uses xmodmap and xcape to emulate some of the functionality of my ergodox layout. Obviously I can't physically modify the keyboard but I can remap control to caps lock, use xcape to make it send escape when used on its own (and use "space cadet shifts" to input parentheses), I also like to shuffle some keys to make them easier to reach (for instance I don't use Alt a lot but I use Super to control my WM, so I use xmodmap to swap them on regular keyboards).
This is a very good question and it did in fact occur to me when I was designing the keyboard layout. Partly due to this concern I stuck with a QWERTY layout for alphabetic characters, so I'd at least retain some familiarity with traditional keyboards. Besides that, I'm typing on my laptop right now and often plug in a traditional keyboard if I'm gaming, so I haven't found lack of familiarity with a traditional keyboard a problem.
I do have some lingering switching issues, notably I've put -/_ and +/= on the left side since there isn't room on the right, and `/~ are below left instead of above left.
It's annoying for the first hour, then the muscle memory kicks in. It seems to be slowly but surely sinking in, I expect at some point my fingers will just learn which is which.
Here is a link to my keyboard layout which you can freely use. It is optimised for Vim and Ubuntu use.
https://github.com/Ganon-M/ergodox-vim-ubuntu