Real estate

Your keyboard is one of the most important tools in your working day. There are many factors to consider. I think the most overlooked attribute is keyboard selfishness. I’ve had a few keyboards in my time and one thing I have trouble with is that the more ergonomic their design, the more selfish they tend to be with regards to desk space. Ergonomic keyboards tend to be pretty big which is fine if all you use is a keyboard but you also have to fit a mouse (or equivalent) on your desk, and this makes a lot of ergonomic keyboards very unergonomic. It hurts to constantly reach to the side that little bit more to use my mouse. If I was designing a keyboard I’d make the numerical keypad detachable, so you could put it where-ever you wanted. Or no keypad at all (you can buy them seperately). At the moment my keyboard is slightly off to the left and at a slight angle and my wrists keep ending up at slighlty bent angles. This completely defeats the purpose. So consider the ergonomic qualitys of a compact “unergonomic” keyboard.

Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard 4000

I currently have a Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard 4000. I needed a split keyboard* and just wanted something quick and relatively cheap (I sometimes think if I was rich I wouldn’t have RSI). There was a lot of thought put into the design and it will do me for now but the keys are surprisingly loud and once again it’s just too big, full reviews on everythingusb.com and cnet.

Kinesis Evolution

The best keyboard I’ve owned was a Kinesis Evolution. It was completely split so you could put each side at whatever angle and width apart suited you. It might look weird but was very natural to type on. I didn’t get the version with the touchpad but I stuck a Cirque touchpad on with blu tac. This was a great setup because all my input devices were directly in front of me without needing to stretch to either side. Unfortunately over time I developed an adversity to the abrasion of my fingertips using the touchpad (not to mention having fingers in an exact position for long periods). This developed into another painful complaint over time. To this day I can’t bear to use touchpads, not for any great lenght of time anyway. I’d strongly advise to avoid overuse of touchpads (and laptops are the work of satan).

Macros

Another great feature of the Kinesis Evolution keyboard was that it could record macros, so for example, I could log on every morning with one keystroke. And other repetitive keyboard actions could be recorded and recalled with a key combination. This extra funtionality is invaluable but this model don’t seem to be on the Kinesis site at present and the site also looks suspiciously dated - but there are other split keyboards there.

Amongst this setup, I also had a foot pedal which I used to click my mouse - but the wicked project manager wouldn’t let me take any of these with me when I left that job to go to college, even though I know for a fact they’re still in a box under her desk.

Height

Height is such an important factor to setup, not only of your keyboard but for your workstation in general. I will be doing a separate post but I’ll touch on it briefly here; a lot of ergonomic keyboards can also be fairly high unfortunately. As most of us don’t have the luxury of adjustable desks, this can cause a lot of problems. Always make sure your wrists are slightly below your elbows and are never bent up or down when typing. Adjustable keyboard trays are a good option, more to come on that. The other option is to get your seat up as high as possible, then compliment by using a footrest and adjusting monitor height.

Ideal setup?

Until hardware designers take a more holistic approach and come up with an all-in solution, I think one a good option is to think modular. Get one compact split keyboard and numerical keypad with extra functionality.

Summary

• Ergonomic split keyboard: Good but width and height important
• Separate numeric keypad: Good, gives flexibity
• Extra functionality: Hot keys are invaluable but watch out for real estate
• Flexible setup: Always good

*I’ll be making assumptions from time to time, at this stage everyone know why split keyboards are better right? Let me know if not.