March 2008 Archives

After playing with the Realforce 101, I finally realized that my poor typing habits cause my poor wrists to start hurting even with the best of the standard design keyboards. So I'm changing my focus mainly to ergonomic keyboards. While ergo keyboards typically don't have the fanciest key switches, they have widely varying designs which are worth exploring.

I actually purchased an old-style Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro off of ebay. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I expected. I didn't even notice that much improvement over the two MS Natural Elite's that I own, so I'm selling it off right away. I probably won't bother writing a review for it.

But next up is the much more interesting, Kinesis Freestyle. This is sort of a commercialization of what a lot of hobbyists have been trying to do: a physically split keyboard with a chord connecting the two halves. There are similar products, such as the Comfort Ergoflex, but the Kinesis is the first to come in at the $99 price mark. I've ordered one with the $40 VIP accessory which gives me wrist rests and a prop piece to raise up the inner sides of the halves to get an arrangement similar to what one finds on typical fixed split keyboards.