Never trust your hands to a generic, sticky old Dell keyboard that you just find on your desk at work. In my case, it took about a month of using that keyboard to develop a case of tendinitis. To be fair this is the second time I’d experienced such a problem; the mouse was partially responsible, and Emacs chording was also contributing it’s share.

Since this was the second time I’d experienced pains in my hands from typing I’d already done my research and knew that I’d want to look at buying a “Kinesis”: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ keyboard. The problem was primarily that Kinesis make two very different styles of keyboards – the freestyle which is most similar to a conventional keyboard – with a similar layout except that it is split into two independent halves and the more radical Advantage. The Advantage has two recessed key ‘wells’, and radically has thumb keypads forcing you to make use of your more powerful digits. It was this latter feature that made me order the advantage even though this is an expensive keyboard. Personally I’ve never seen any true ergonomic keyboards (other than Microsoft Natural boards and the like) in real life – they just aren’t sold in South Africa and it costs a lot to have them shipped over here. So I asked around on various forums and newsgroups before committing to the capital outlay. One of the things that I’d never considered when making the choice was the type of keyswitches in the keyboard. In the past I owned an IBM buckling spring keyboard, so I do appreciate the feel of a good keyboard, although quite frankly I found the gentle softness and quietness of cheap membrane PC keyboards to be a relief after the IBM! It turns out that the kinds of keyswitch most highly prized on the geekhack forums are the Cherry (Cherry “Brown” is liked the most by some) and Topre switches. So, reason number two to buy a Kinesis Advantage – it has Cherry Browns. If you’re interested in ordering the same from South Africa bear in mind that it’ll cost you about twice the direct exchange rate once you’ve factored in UPS shipping (obligatory) and customs duties. So anyone who lives in Cape Town and wants to try mine out before buying, I fully understand!

It has been an interesting journey and things I’ve long considered to be true have had to be reviewed. One of these things is about learning to type correctly. My wife, Shira, took the time to learn to type correctly – she bought a typing instructor (Deluxe!) CD-ROM and did all the exercises and games, and the first thing she does is position her fingers correctly on the home row. I’ve been hacking computers for years and have been able to fully touch type without looking down at my fingers since around about the time I took up programming full time. And of course I’ve picked up the same bad typing habits you have, and have never considered it a worthwhile use of time to learn typing per se.

My first experience of the Kinesis is that it felt like being taken straight back to being a complete keyboarding beginner – I was only able to type at a few words per minute at first and the feeling of disorientation was strong. The keyboard ships with a little booklet with typing exercises in it to help you pick up the habit of blind typing again, and spending a couple of evenings following the exercises in the book is sufficient to develop some basic keyboarding confidence again. The main Kinesis manual is clear that during the adaption phase one shouldn’t switch between the Kinesis and conventional keyboards, although after you have adapted you can switch back and forth easily (conventional keyboards do feel cramped after one has become accustomed to the Kinesis, and the staggered arrangement of keys on conventional keyboards mean that typing blind one starts to hit the ‘B’ key accidentally quite a lot again, but this is not so much of a problem). The booklet of typing exercises that is shipped with the keyboard is worthwhile and useful – I gained an appreciation of the logic behind key placement and design and also learned useful things about typing correctly, such as using the opposite hand to press shift when capitalizing a letter.

Some things I’ve noticed:

Using your pinkies. I never learned to use my ‘pinkie’ fingers in typing (possibly because laptop keyboards are compressed and you don’t need to), but I learned that in proper touch typing you will use your weakest digit quite a lot, especially for pressing ‘shift’ and the letter ‘P’ amongst others. Also, it is good typing practice to use the opposite hand for the modifier key, so you don’t scrunch up a single hand and injure it in this way (think of the compression that your left hand experiences if you press ‘Control’ and ‘C’ with this hand on a conventional keyboard).

Split keyboards. If you’re forced to type correctly and use the correct hands and fingers then even a non-ergonomic keyboard is fine. So if you really and truly never cross over your hands when typing you no longer need this feature, but I’m going to need to use a split keyboard with a gap between the left and right group of keys for some time to come. Even after using the Kinesis for a couple of weeks I find that I still try and type ‘T’, ‘G’ and ‘B’ with my right hand occasionally, swapping over is a difficult habit to drop. Here’s a pic of the split keyboards in Webwit’s collection:

(Picture shown with permission. Note that he has arranged the keyboards with his favourites in the front row – and the Kinesis advantage is the black and blue keyboard in the center of the second row from the front, so it is not one of his top picks although little can compete with the datahand in the front center. This is an impressive collection – about the only board that I’ve noticed missing is the smartboard).

Posture and balance – I’ve noticed that I walk up stairs differently after using the Kinesis for a few hours. This is partly because it has forced me to sit upright, although I think using all five fingers for typing is also a factor – the experience of typing on the Kinesis is more like that of a pianist using the whole hand; a greater muscular sensitivity and suppleness is developed by typing on this keyboard – it isn’t necessary to have to bash the keys as the keys register before bottoming out) and this does have a muscular repercussion on a greater level.

Non-staggered key arrangement. Why none of the Kinesis reviews don’t mention this is a mystery for me – this is one of the best selling points of this keyboard. Keys are in vertical rows – for example ‘E’ is directly above ‘D’ – this really does make it easier to type since all you need to remember to do is to move your finger directly upward one key.

Size. Ever so slightly smaller keys on the Kinesis would be nice. Sometimes it does feel like it was designed for someone with slightly bigger hands than mine, and slightly smaller keys and keywells would improve my experience of this board considerably.

Cannot raise the front of the keyboard. Other ergonomic keyboards offer the ability to tilt the front or the back of the keyboard (and I have found that raising the front of such keyboards does help me) but unfortunately the Kinesis does not offer this facility and it is difficult to maintain keyboard stability by propping it up from underneath due to the curved design of the underside.

For alphanumeric entry the Kinesis has become quite comfortable for me and I can hit a decent WPM, but when it comes to hitting ctrl- and alt- and the arrow keys I’ve been struggling. I also mispress ‘enter’ and ‘space’ quite frequently (they are on the same thumb with enter requiring a slighly greater stretch). A large part of the problem is the thumb keypads are elevated above where my hands are while typing. If you look at other ergonomic keyboard designs such as the Maltron (the similarity to the Kinesis is not accidental!) you will notice that the thumb keypads are recessed. Since the Kinesis is fully programmable in firmware you can remap keys however you desire. I have found that placing ‘Alt’ on the bottom of the thumb pads (where ‘end’ and page down’ are normally) has helped me to avoid doing weird contortions with my thumbs, and I’ve also taken care to have an ‘Alt’ key available for both my left and right hands so that I don’t have to scrunch up a single hand.

Certainly, I need to give myself more than a couple of months usage on this keyboard before I can say more about whether I like it or hate it – it has become much easier to use after a couple of weeks, but I do wonder if I’ll ever be able to use this keyboard completely on autopilot where there is not one part of my brain thinking where the alt key lies or how to find the arrow keys. On the other hand, the excellent keyswitches and the non-staggered split design are features that I will always look for on other keyboards in future.

Keyboard buying could easily become an expensive and distracting hobby. Sites like Elite keyboards offer an interesting range of mechanical keyboards, and hardened collectors order custom made keycaps. I’ll almost certainly be ordering a keyboard with Cherry blue keyswitches in the next while, but shipping to South Africa is a major cost and I’m not even sure I’ll like the feel of the keyboard without having access to other enthusiasts in Cape Town who have them on hand to try out. So, if you’re in Cape Town (or Joburg) and have a keyboard with Cherry Blues then please add a comment below.