I HATE MICROSTUTTERING.

I told myself I wasn’t going to buy anything but Steam games this Black Friday but I couldn’t resist. The Human Solution was having a sale on the Kinesis Advantage (a $300 dollar keyboard) with a 10% off coupon for Black Friday and free shipping. FREE SHIPPING!

Yep, I just bought this keyboard for $242.10, shipped.

Now let me explain. My RSI/carpal-tunnel symptoms have been getting worse and worse so I’ve been looking for some ergonomic keyboards to help fix it. There is quite a selection of them but I wanted one with mechanical switches leaving only a few (expensive) choices. Among them was the the Kinesis Advantage, one of the highest-regarded ergonomic keyboards. The huge price tag had put me off initially but then I thought about it for a bit. Here’s the rationale I came up with to convince myself into buying it:

• I’m probably going to be making a living typing on a keyboard, might as well make it a nice one and not ruin my hands.
• I’m hoping this will help with the RSI/carpal-tunnel problems. Better get a ergonomic keyboard than have to go to doctor to treat them, right?
• It’ll make me type faster and be more productive (hopefully).
• It’ll look super cool!
• $242.10 is still not that expensive for a keyboard is it? I feel like keyboards are often the most neglected piece of computer hardware and most people buy the cheapest one they can find. As a person who uses the computer for the majority of the day, the keyboard is one of the most important pieces of a system. It’s how you interact with your computer, how you control it (yeah, yeah, there’s the mouse too). It should be on par with the other components of your system.
• IT’S 19.3% OFF!

That last one was what really convinced me to buy it. Can’t mess with the percentages man.

I will probably put up a review when I get it. I’m excited; I love getting stuff in the mail.

I am sad to say that I haven’t really reached my goal of 100 wpm yet. Right now, the fastest I can type with Dvorak is around 70-80 wpm. It’s close but not quite there. The one thing that I’ve found increasing annoying with my use of Dvorak is the extra focus on the right pinky. Both the L and S keys are pressed with the right pinky. When I’m typing for long periods on time, it really stresses out my right pinky and causes some pain. In fact, I feel like I use my right fingers way more than the left ones and often have to take breaks from typing cause my right arm hurts. The only time I need to move my left fingers up and down rows is to type punctuation or some other less common letters. But its the opposite for my right hand. I feel like its all over the place and the balance is all lopsided.

Just recently I came across another keyboard layout called Colemak. I’ve actually known about it since I discovered Dvorak but didn’t really look into it but I was trying not to fall asleep today in my EUR201 class and decided to do some research on Colemak. The change in Colemak isn’t nearly as drastic as Dvorak. Many of the keys are in the same place as QWERTY and I think only around 17 key positions moved. Plus, the Ctrl ZXCV shortcut keys are all in the same place unlike Dvorak, where I have to use to take my hand off the mouse to use them. There also isn’t the L and S pinky problem like in Dvorak. I’m thinking about trying out Colemak during the next break from school to see how it is. Hopefully it’ll get rid of the right hand pain but I guess I’ll just stick with Dvorak for now.

Oh and I set my Caps Lock key to Backspace and replaced the Context Menu key with Caps Lock. Seeing how I don’t really use Caps Lock and never use the Context Menu key, I thought it would be nice to have the Backspace at a better location on the keyboard.

Last time I tried to learn dvorak, it was a complete failure. I was typing way too slow and I had work to complete so I just gave up on it. I’ve decided to try and learn it again mainly because I was completely bored out of my mind but also cause I’ve been starting to feel some pain in my fingers. Dvorak is supposed to be “healthier” for your fingers or something cause you don’t have to move your fingers as much.

I already had my desktop keyboard switched to dvorak. I wanted to seriously learn it this time so I even converted my Macbook’s keys to dvorak. Wasn’t too hard. Just popped them off with a tiny screw driver and put them back in the correct order. Now people who want to use my computer won’t be able to because all the keys are in the wrong places. Awesome!

I’ve been playing typeracer everyday since I’ve switched over to speed up my typing. Right now I’m typing at around 40 wpm (vs 80wpm when I was using qwerty) which isn’t too bad considering I’ve only been using dvorak for four days. But I feel like a noob cause I have to keep looking at the keys. The most annoying thing about dvorak is that all the shortcut keys are now on the other side of the keyboard. Ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-s, ctrl-z are all on the right side. Also I keep typing “ass” when I want to type “all” because the ‘s’ is now where the ‘l’ used to be. Kind of annoying

That’s all for now. Off to play some more typeracer. I’ll revisit this when my typing speed reaches 100+ wpm.

BEFORE

AFTER

Dual 24” LCDs FTW.