After two days with my new ergo keyboard I’m feeling slightly less discomfort in my arms and hands (especially the left hand), while my typing may have actually improved, if not in speed yet than in proper form.
There was about a one-day adjustment phase where my speed and accuracy suffered oh, about a 15 per cent loss.
It’s not an extreme ergo board, mind you. It’s the Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard, which sort of splits the board in two down the middle and turns and slopes the halves slightly out and away from each other. But otherwise almost every key is in its usual place.
It is, after a decade of four-finger, look-up-look-down pecking, teaching me to type more properly. I never noticed before how I automatically hit ‘y’ with my left index finger and other similar bad habits. This divide down the middle makes it more difficult for the right hand to get to keys it would normally hit on the left, and vice-versa. And it feels better already: my fingers are covering less distance, I’m keeping my hands more still, I’m pecking a little less.
This keyboard feels good, nice touch to the keys, slightly padded but maybe a bit too loud (does it echo more because of the size?). It’s freaking huge, actually, this keyboard. It rises in a big curvy arc above my desk like an ancient burial mound in Ireland that’s been forgotten for centuries and has gradually gotten smoother and smoother and covered in pretty grass.
You can’t remove the hand rest, either. The whole thing is taking up about 50 per cent more desk space in all three dimensions than my previous cheapo board.
This keyboard cost me $48 CDN at the UVic Computer Store and came with an optical mouse I already own. But it was really the only nice keyboard they had. I didn’t do any research: I needed a keyboard ASAP so I figured I’d give the ergo a try.
Split board or not, my advice is don’t buy a cheap keyboard. I spent $20 on a ViewSonic model two weeks ago, which was still $8 more than the keyboard I killed last month (see Beer Collides With Keyboard, No Survivors). But its craptastic overall construction and feel–but especially its slightly sticky ctrl key–drove me nicely mad. If I didn’t press that key just perfectly dead centre it wouldn’t make contact. I do A LOT of ctrl-x, ctrl-v.
A couple other quick observations about the Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard after two days of use:
- I like the over-sized delete key a lot
- I like the oversized ctrl and alt keys, too
- Not sure if the multimedia keys are vital, but so far the media player controls are great because I can skip or pause tracks in iTunes without having to switch focus to the program
- Sort of annoying the default setting reconfigures all the F keys. You have to manually toggle them back to normal whenever (I think whenever) you turn your computer on.
- The stiffer key action may be a reason it feels faster, and not actually me improving? I’ll do some controlled studies later.
- I use ctrl– and ctrl-+ with my left hand a lot to zoom in and out in graphics programs: now it’s more awkward as that side of the board is turned and titled away from the left hand
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