In an eBay cleansing session I stumbled across a slightly faulty maltron keyboard for sale and thought it looked pretty awesome and started to ponder on changing my keyboard, a microsoft 4000 which after two years of use has half the letters rubbed off. Having said that, it is the best keyboard I have owned. The fact that it is raised and slightly split has certainly helped with any wrist pain that I had in the past, albeit slight.
My reasons for changing are that I would prefer a tenkeyless board, get the mouse a bit closer and also have a more comfortable posture. Years of night time coding after work hunched up on the sofa on the laptop ended in a hefty chiropractor bill so anything to prevent more of that is a bonus while using the office pc.
So I have spent an entire week (ten hours of my life i'll not get back!) hunting for a keyboard that will fit the bill so I thought what better to do than test out the new one and write the ones I came across with a brief overview of each. I will pop a list of all the url's I can find that are half decent in my history on the bottom of the blog as well as some of the ones that I saw but didn't consider for one reason or another. The Ergodox looks pretty awesome for a start but isn't in production yet.
Oh and before I start I guess it's best to describe my keyboard use. I'm not a true touch typist, I don't look at the keys and I do use all my fingers but its self taught, at 60WPM I was fine with it. I use a qwerty layout and spend most of my time in the console using vim, alpine, mc, cmus so I remapped the ctrl key to caps lock. I also use awesomewm on crunchbang so the mod key (or windows key for microsoft users) gets used quite a lot to move between screens, tabs and clients. With the mouse just used for internet browsing and triggering synergy to switch machines.
For those who just want to know what I bought in the scroll down to number seven. This is another post that I did a month later with my findings.
So in order of preference, first being the most unlikely.
1) Das Keyboard Website YoutubeLove the simplicity of the keyboard and it seems to get really good reviews especially because of the switches used but it's not tenkeyless and I don't want to go back to a standard layout. The main reasons for the inclusion are that the dev community rank it highly and also the YouTube video above has a decent explanation of mechanical keyboards.
2) Happy Hacking Professional Website YoutubeNice looking bit of kit with good reviews and the right size but just not laid out right for me.
Looking like something from the movies the data hand sounds perfect, I'm just not sure that I am ready for such a big step in use, nor the price, at a touch under a thousand pounds it's not in my budget. Plus not being a true touch typist coupled with an unfamiliar interface didn't sound appealing for that money. Although the reviews look awesome and it looks the dogs danglys. Maybe next year.
4|) TypeMatrix Website YoutubeFantastic layout, just too flat :-(
Of all the keyboards this is the closest to the one I use and the layout is awesome, even the ctrl is in the right place. The reason that I did not go for this one is the numerous conversations with people that have had little to no support from the manufacturer and also because it is still a flat keyboard. However I'm still tempted with it even as a portable keyboard for the laptop while I am away from home for long periods.
This was a very close second and beaten because of price and the number pad in the middle. There seemed to be a lot of transcribers using these and not so many developers.
A big thanks to Chris over at KIZZX2.COM for his help over the past week. I stumbled across Chris's review and felt that his use pretty much matched mine and after exchanging some emails decided to purchase one. Please have a read of Chris's blog on his findings whilst using one, they mirror that of mine including the damn awful rubber F keys, although mine does not send two key presses to my one which I have seen reported a lot!
As a non-true touch typist the migration is not as bad as I had imagined, although my WPM is shocking at the moment, I'm down to around 15 WPM. All the keys are placed perfectly for me and as for comfort, heads above even the old faithful Microsoft 4000. The journey to the mouse is a lot better also.
Update: Oct 3rd 2013 WPM on 10fastfingers.com now stands at 62WPM with 2 out of 57 incorrect words.
The keys are cherry MX brown switches which are very smooth, not too sure I could cope with the linear feel switches as I guess I would bottom those out every keystroke.
After a days use I can tell the difference, usually my right hand aches and my left pinky is numb but today both are fine. Although, granted I have typed less characters!
Update: the macros are an awesome time saver too, from strings of text up to rows of commands with a pause in between, pretty awesome.
For a good deal if you are outside of the UK try this link. Alternatively for us British, try this one.
Onward for the hunt for a touchpad, if anyone has any suggestions for a linux friendly touchpad with just the basics and works well with multiple screens please drop me a comment. Ideally something that fits in the middle if the Kinesis.
Kinesis do a few different keyboards but I was after something that wasn't a keyboard separated by a wire or a keyboard with a hinge in the middle. For those still looking then take a look at the other models they do.
Some of the others that I found along the way are:
Ergodox
Humble Hacker
Gold Touch pro
Safe Type
