A year of fancy keyboard, honestly (Kinesis Advantage)
10 Nov 2018I know … I know … it is a scary, wierd looking keyboard.
When I first tried, I thought I’d never be able to master it. Although you are expected to type even slower then with the traditional layout in the begining, the feeling of unproductiveness is quite painfull. But after around 2 months of daily practice I was able to type more comfortably, just as the manual predicts, curiously enough.
Now I judge this to be the best device for typing, because it delivers what it promises:
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The separate hand position favors a better posture. If you are working for hours every day, this is not something to disregard. Also, this makes it harder for you to cheat using the “wrong” hand/finger to type each key.
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The keys are aligned, instead of that wierd diagonal layout inherited from the typewritters. The keys needed to be arrenged in a way to avoid the levers to clash into each other. There’s no reason for that anymore, but we are still doing it. (I always remember the story of the monkeys and the ladder)
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Finger load balancing: you can use the thumbs! They are smart fingers that are underused and understimated in the traditional layout. (Two thumbs for one spacebar!) Have you ever thought about what fingers you use the most? In the traditional layout my pinkies were doing the most work, and they are dumb. It makes total sense to take some of the work from them and give to the thumbs.
I’ve always been a bad typist before. I now can touch type around 60 wpm comfortably, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be much faster than that, but health wise I’m much better. I feel my typing to be more fluent and relaxed then ever.
Expensive?
I often hear that the Kinesis Advantage 2 is an expensive keyboard! It could cost as much as a fancy cellphone, but the keyboard is something that I’ll spend hours interacting with every day and it’s part of my job, my source of income.
It would be much more expensive to get wrist, elbow or back pain, or simply be annoyed or stressed by bad posture and bad typing habits.