Things we love: Kinesis Ergonomic Keyboards
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007Jonathan, for about as long as I can remember, has been a proud owner and advocate of Kinesis ergonomic keyboards. He was the first among a growing group of people I know who swear by these things. Problems with RSI and CTS, for most, seem to melt away or be largely alleviated by the Kinesis. I’ve never really had any problems with my wrists/fingers, so there was no pressing reason to get one of these things. On the outside, I always thought the Kinesis was ridiculous. I couldn’t even log into my webmail without hunting and pecking away. Pair programming on it was pretty much impossible. However, after I could count 10 friends who swear by these, and finding myself [again] in need of a new keyboard I took the $300 leap and gave it a chance.
The first week of retraining micro-muscle patterns was painful, I admit. But now I find myself in love. It’s Freaking INCREDIBLE. Take a look at this thing, it’s a beauty, and the geek factor is off the charts.
What is going on is a design that allows you to access literally every button on the keyboard without leaving home row [which has blue keycaps, I love that]. This means no more reaching, no more moving around to page up and down or use the arrows to navigate a text editor. Get your palms into a comfortable position and stay there. Everything is easily touched by a simple up down motion or a bend of your thumb.
Look at your regular keyboard; you’ll notice that the QWERTY keys are not directly atop the ASDFGH keys. Q is offset above and to the left of A. This makes it very difficult to reach the Q with your left pinky finger if you’re comfortably positioned on home row. On the Kinesis the keys are aligned in a grid, of sorts. To hit the Q, given the parabolic shape of the pod and the grid layout, you just slightly lift your pinky. No reach, a simple vertical transition.
Along with these two major ergonomic features, it’s just a great keyboard. I type WAY faster than I had with the three MS Natural Pro keyboards that I had used for years. A side benefit of the retraining process is that it has really cleaned up my regular typing. It comes with a nice instruction booklet that has 20 or so exercises that it recommends you perform daily for the first week. Given how comfortable it is to type correctly, you really notice when you are doing things that you shouldn’t be. Like hitting P or Q with your ring finger instead of your pinky.For $300 you get some nice extras, like support for crazy reprogramming features and extra keycaps and quick layout changes for transition back and forth between Mac and PC mode. People seem to jump at the chance to drop $800 on an Aeron chair, arguing that “I sit in it 8-12 hours a day.” Not a bad argument. Do the same for your hands — it’s a tough first week, but well worth the effort.
Update from jrk: Finally, Jeff understands why I always found his MS Natural so disgusting to my fingers…
Also, I should point out that you don’t have to pay $300 to get one — they nearly always have refurbished models available for $191 (PS/2 Essential — non-programmable) and $239 (USB Advantage) at their online store. I’ve never paid more than $239.
