Poor Man's Kinesis Keyboard: The K'nexis Keyboard

I have both a Kinesis Advantage2 and an ErgoDox EZ. I've used a Kinesis Advantage on and off for nearly 20 years now, and got my ErgoDox in 2020 when my Kinesis was locked at the office.

I think the Kinesis is better for my hands overall, but it is a fairly tall keyboard - the positioning of the thumb cluster is just better on the Kinesis. They both have good programmability; I like things about both, but the Kinesis doesn't require an external app to configure it. I think the ErgoDox is probably better if you like customizing things, but I miss the row of F keys.

I'm going to be switching to full-remote, and I'll probably set up my Kinesis as my primary keyboard, with the ErgoDox configured with a secondary machine I'll be using primarily for the music production I'm definitely going to get into any day now. The ErgoDox is definitely much more portable and I can easily fit it in my backpack on the go.

> These beautiful keyboards move the Shift and Ctrl keys to your thumbs, which have more power than the lowly pinkies

Absolutely. IMO the CMD key on Macs used with the thumb feels so much more natural from an ergonomic point of view than the Control key used with a pinky.

It always surprises me people don't just use the palm bit under the little finger to press the left ctrl key, it seems so natural to do it that way, you just tilt your left wrist slightly.

(2005) Discussion (17 points, 19 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40842408

I never managed to learn touch typing. I type with my two index fingers and depending on the exact letter order they’re supported by the middle and ring fingers (e.g. if I type the combination ‘ijn’ which is common in my language, I do ring, middle, index downwards). none of it is consciously learned, it’s just what I ended up with after typing a lot and never learning a formal method.

I type mostly without looking at the keyboard, but I find myself doing quick peeks every few sentences or so. I also probably make more typing errors than a touch typist would.

I’ve started to learn touch typing a few times now, but every time I give up because touch typing feels like it will destroy my wrists or give me back pain. How do you people do this? Like typing the ‘.’ Or ‘,’ with the pinky finger, and even the normal letters often require my fingers to stretch in a way that feels painful after a while. My hands also are probably quite heavy or so and it feels like I have to strain to keep all fingers resting on the keyboard without pressing the keys.

So I’m sort of stuck between typing errors and shoulder/wrist pains, anyone who can relate?

Another "cheapish" option is to get a JIS layout keyboard. They add a few extra keys around the space bar that can be remapped using something like kmonad to do stuff like layers, make one ctrl, etc. It's the closest thing to a Kinesis you can get on a laptop. On an older model ThinkPad a replacement JIS keyboard is like $30.

My strategy for ergonomics on a standard style keyboard like a laptop is to remap Ctrl to Alt and Alt to Win/Super. I also put backspace on CapsLock.

@dang can you add "2005" to the title?

It's cool but very dated.

i guess it would depend on the keyboard front bezel, but a teensy with a few switches might be a little more robust, but maybe cost $20