Posted in ergonomics

30 Days of the Kinesis Advantage2

Being attached to a keyboard for up to 16 hours a day (on a busy day) definitely takes a toll on wrists. After experiencing intermittent pain in my fingers/wrists, I decided to splurge on the Kinesis Advantage2.

Day 1

Keyboard delivered. Immediately switch keyboards (from my Das Keyboard 4 with Cherry MX Blue) and try to finish the rest of my work. This thing feels weird. The keys are squishier than I like too.

Day 2

Typing slower than 6 year old me with "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing!". I have lots of project deadlines coming up which hopefully will provide me with ample practice time.

I'm beginning to wonder if the keyboard placement on some of the keys were always off, or if I was typing wrong for 30 years.

Day 3

Looks longingly at lifeless Das Keyboard

Day 4

I can sort of touch type, but there's definitely a few patterns where I'm messing things up. Typing in chats and e-mails is okay, however for programming it's a little annoying. Productivity is definitely slower since I'm thinking more of where the key I want to press is.

  • My work laptop is a Mac and the Command Key being on the right hand side has me using two hands for certain actions instead of stretching out my left hand like a contortionist
  • It doesn't feel natural to highlight words with "Shift" + "Arrow" since my hand positioning is reversed
  • I edit a lot of JSON formatted files, and the bracket ("[", "]") keys make me want to die
  • With tmux I use the "`" key as the prefix key and I keep missing it
  • In fact all of the bottom row keys (like the "Arrow" keys) I mistype frequently
  • Using vim isn't bad except for using Ctrl + "[" as my escape
  • I also keep missing the "X", "C", "V", "N", "M" keys since they're shifted ever so slightly from my Das Keyboard

On the plus side it feels easier (more accurate) to type if I lift my wrists slightly. Also I haven't felt any tinglyness.

Day 9

Worked from home for a couple of days. This keyboard is starting to feel pretty comfortable. Beginning to re-do shortcuts in OSX programs now that I have a better feel for the keys.

Day 11

Need to start to look into some key macros. This is might take a while since I use vi (or vi bindings) a lot and I don't want to interfere with those. Handling brackets would make my life a lot easier though.

Day 15

After using this for a while, I'm going to skip key macros. I keep switching between multiple OS's and I'm not 100% sure I want to commit to something right now.

Day 21

Went to work and used the work laptop keyboard. Since all of the keys are not in a matrix layout I keep mis-hitting the "C" and "V" keys...

Day 30

I think it's safe to say I feel like I've acclimated to the layout of the Advantage2. There's still room for improvement in my usage, but I'd like to use this more before figuring out what I want to rebind.

Overview

To sum up my experiences with the Advantage2...

Likes

  • Wrist pain/numbness is gone while typing. Yay!
  • It's easy to type quickly for standard documents (word docs/blogs/etc)

Dislikes

  • Moving to other "standard" keyboard layouts takes a while to get used to, however it takes a couple of hours before I'm hitting keys accurately again.
  • I code for a living, so certain keys I have to hit a lot are placed in a position that still feels a little awkward:
    • In particular, the "[", "]", "(", ")" and "`" are the ones I keep missing
    • If I mis-hit the key the first time, I usually get it on the second try.

Other

  • There are some keys I still don't use often and will probably rebind. The "Home" and "End" keys are the biggest culprits, however the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys also don't get a lot of use.
  • I still haven't used this for any gaming... however I don't know if I'll find the time to. I'd probably switch back to the Das for that :).