The Great $300 (!) Keyboard Experiment
Back when I did my first gig as a "technical director" last year (for The Sound of Music, not that it's pertinent) I worked like a slave. I was at the warehouse every weekend and many evenings, hauling around heavy set pieces, which activity eventually took its toll on my aged bones.
My left wrist in particular took a beating. I'm not sure what I did to it, but it was quite tender for a few months after that show, and I saw a physician. "Don't know what it is", he told me. "Probably a tendonitis. Wrap it in a splint for a week and take two Aleves twice a day. Let me know if it doesn't improve." I followed his advice, and it seemed to get better... but after two weeks, not one. I decided not to return to have it x-rayed, but to baby it as necessaray.
Since them, the wrist discomfort has come and gone. If I baby it for awhile, the nagging pain goes away. If I start to use it with any regularity (and especially if I'm horsing stuff around) then it becomes a nuisance. I'm always conscious of the wrist when I'm typing, which is, unfortunately, all the time.
So I've wondered off-and-on over the last year: would one of those so-called ergonomic keyboards do me any good? Melynda has run through a fair number of keyboards, and she even tried a Twiddler for a couple of weeks. None of them did anything for her, until she settled on a Microsoft Natural keyboard. She swears by it, as does another pal of mine, but I never was able to warm up to it for some reason. The couple of times I've tried to use one it was just too weird.
So what do I do? I go ultra weird, of course. I am the proud owner of a Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which is a truly odd little device. The keys are arranged in two bowl-shaped depressions at either side of the keyboard. Keys are arranged in pretty much QWERTY sequence, though they are sitting in neat little columns and not arranged diagonally as they are on a normal keyboard.
The Kinesis keyboard also makes better use of your thumbs. You use your thumbs for space, enter, backspace and delete, and eight other common keys. The theory is to make your fingers travel less, and make your thumbs do something useful.
Though I'd been eyeballing this keyboard on the 'net for almost a year, I'd never seen one up close and personal, as there is no dealer in my neck of the woods. But a series of articles posted by Bill Clementson prodded me into ordering the keyboard. Bill has fought the RSI demons and claims to have won; he has nothing but good things to say about the Kinesis keyboard. Emboldened by his success, I plunked down $300 and ordered one.
It's been a week now, and I don't know if I have a keeper or not. I am more fatigued using this keyboard than I am using the standard unit; this may be because I'm learning to type all over again. Special characters are coming to me, but I have to look at the keyboard all too often yet. Emacs keyboard chords aren't the big pain that I thought they would be, but I find that I'm having to learn to use the ctrl and shift keys all over.
It's been total immersion: the keyboard commutes with me to work and back every day. My speed's not up to snuff yet, not by a long shot, but I can get stuff done. And I had to go into the office last weekend and pull someone's address out of my work computer - using the old QWERTY keyboard. Boy, that felt weird, and I was missing keys for the first minute or two.
I'll give it another few weeks. It's on a 60-day acceptance period,
and if I don't like it I'll just send it back. So far it's an
uneasy truce... usable, but kind of a pain. Until using the keyboard
becomes less stressful, my wrist is going to keep bugging me, too.
I'd really like to see some improvement soon.
posted at: 19:28 | path: /dailies | permanent link to this entry