I love my collection of Kinesis contoured keyboards. I have one huge grip with them, though: the function keys are spongy and too closely spaced. I regularly hit F1 when I meant to hit Escape. Do you (or others) find this irritating as well? It would be a flawless programmer's keyboard if only it used regular, evenly-spaced, mechanical function and escape keys.
Yes, the function keys suck, but I don't use them all that much, so it's not so bad. Also, I mapped Esc onto one of the thumb keys.
My bigger gripe is that it sometimes misses up-key events, so a key will start repeating, or the Alt or Shift key will be virtually stuck down. All it takes to fix this is to press the key in question, but that's a pain in the butt. I've complained to Kinesis, but they claim to have never heard of the issue. This despite the fact that it happens on all of my Kinesis keyboards, and all my friends with Kinesis keyboards complain about the very same issue.
On the other hand, these issues are a minuscule price to pay for how good the Kinesis keyboard has been for my hands. More than anything, I credit this keyboard for allowing me to continue to be gainfully employed.
I've recommended this Keyboard to a number of my friends when they've started to have RSI problems. At first they always call me back in a couple of weeks and tell me that they can't believe I recommended this terrible keyboard to them. Then a year later they call me back and thank me profusely for having saved their hands!
Where I work, half the people in my group use them, and they all came to the Kinesis keyboard independently. Everyone who uses one loves them.
That's a good idea, and one I hadn't thought of. Which one did you give up?
My bigger gripe is that it sometimes misses up-key events
I experience that fairly often with this particular keyboard, with the shift key. They have a note on their website about it[1]. Another not-uncommon problem is for a vertical row of keys to go out. I think that's due to a failing PCB trace. I've had keys get flaky on one side or the other, and it turned out that the ribbon cable connecting the hand pocket had wiggled a bit loose, so it was an easy fix. The worst problem I've had is when one of my keys just stopped working altogether. I emailed Kinesis and they sent me four or five Cherry MX switches, no charge. Ten minutes with a screwdriver and a soldering iron, and it was fixed.
recommended this Keyboard ... they always call me back in a couple of weeks and tell me that they can't believe I recommended this terrible keyboard
I should probably mention my own experience, for the benefit of HNers. When I first bought the keyboard, it seemed awful and I regretted wasting so much money. I went from being an 80-100 wpm typist to a snail's pace. I had to interrupt my muscle memory and force my fingers to their new positions. It wasn't as bad as learning to type the first time, but it was tough. Learning to use the new arrow keys (two rows under home row, no hand movement necessary) was mind-bending. My wrist pain actually increased for about two weeks.
After that, it became more natural, and I started to appreciate how smooth and consistent every key was. Spreading more responsibility to my thumbs, and changing the vector of thumb pressure began to feel much better.
I always warn people that the first couple of weeks will be difficult, and not to switch in the middle of a work crunch. :-)
>> That's a good idea, and one I hadn't thought of. Which one did you give up?
I have done a bunch of remapping. I
(1) mapped Esc onto End so that Esc is on my thumb.
I can still do Home and End by going into Keypad mode, but I don't use these keys too much.
These are other remappings I did:
(2) Reversed up and down arrow so they match vi cursor movement. (I don't use vi, but gmail uses the vi mappings for up and down.)
(3) Put Meta (aka Mac's Option) (for Emacs) on Home and Page Up so that I have a meta key on both thumbs. Put Page Up on Right-Alt so that I still have a Page Up key.
(4) Swapped Delete and Tab so that Tab is on my thumb.
