On Ergonomic Keyboards
11/02/07 17:49 |
Apple
Back at college in, oh I dunno, 1993 or so I was
fortunate enough to share a flat with a Macintosh
freak. At the time I was using mostly the Sun Sparcs
on the University campus for, erm, education and an
old Atari-ST for music sequencing.
I mostly used the Mac (a Quadra, I think) for playing SimCity and Maelstrom and general messing about trying to get the speech recognition working because that was way cool. Oh, I think I wrote my final year thesis on it as well. I guess I was a bit 'Ellen Fleiss' about the whole thing and was just glad that it didn't 'like go beep, beep, beep at me' and I didn't have to rewrite it.
One thing it did have that I've been idly keeping an eye out for ever since was a keyboard like this :
I've never really been one for fancy, schmantzy ergonomic devices, preferring instead to numb the pain by typing harder and faster until I can't really feel my hands. After all, have you ever noticed how, in any office environment it's always the guy or girl with all the 'ergo-gizmos' that is just the most annoying whinger? You know the sort of person, they're the ones who are allergic to products with water in them? Not wanting to complain I kept my chin up and headed on into the (carpal) tunnel of oblivion.
Well, now it's 13 years or more since I left university and I've been a professional software developer for almost all of that. I've been quite lucky really with the old aches and pains, but of late I've been hankering after that keyboard again, the one that (to my mind at least) made typing nice. Then recently, I found this... The Key Ovation Gold Touch Apple Compatible Keyboard White USB (snappy name, eh?)
Look, it's almost the same thing! I'm not sure why they propped it up for the photo, you'd have to have some serious problems to want to use it like that, but it's fully adjustable in both bend and splay (if that's what you call it) and is 99.9% the same experience as typing on the old Apple ergonomic keyboard. In some respects it's better too - it has a proper escape key for a start (vi users take note). It is also one of the few ergonomic keyboards on the market that comes with proper Apple keys, like Option and Propeller and it has all the eject, volume and power keys over to the left.
It's lovely to type on as well, with proper clicky, clicky keys and none of the mushy softness that Apple keyboards seem to have acquired of late.
Oh, and the best thing about it? No freakin' number pad to get in the way. I'm sure there's a good reason for putting number pads on keyboards, perhaps they're for people upgrading to computers from calculators or something, but really, when you're my age you really don't need to be made to stretch that extra few inches to reach your mouse...
I mostly used the Mac (a Quadra, I think) for playing SimCity and Maelstrom and general messing about trying to get the speech recognition working because that was way cool. Oh, I think I wrote my final year thesis on it as well. I guess I was a bit 'Ellen Fleiss' about the whole thing and was just glad that it didn't 'like go beep, beep, beep at me' and I didn't have to rewrite it.
One thing it did have that I've been idly keeping an eye out for ever since was a keyboard like this :
I've never really been one for fancy, schmantzy ergonomic devices, preferring instead to numb the pain by typing harder and faster until I can't really feel my hands. After all, have you ever noticed how, in any office environment it's always the guy or girl with all the 'ergo-gizmos' that is just the most annoying whinger? You know the sort of person, they're the ones who are allergic to products with water in them? Not wanting to complain I kept my chin up and headed on into the (carpal) tunnel of oblivion.
Well, now it's 13 years or more since I left university and I've been a professional software developer for almost all of that. I've been quite lucky really with the old aches and pains, but of late I've been hankering after that keyboard again, the one that (to my mind at least) made typing nice. Then recently, I found this... The Key Ovation Gold Touch Apple Compatible Keyboard White USB (snappy name, eh?)
Look, it's almost the same thing! I'm not sure why they propped it up for the photo, you'd have to have some serious problems to want to use it like that, but it's fully adjustable in both bend and splay (if that's what you call it) and is 99.9% the same experience as typing on the old Apple ergonomic keyboard. In some respects it's better too - it has a proper escape key for a start (vi users take note). It is also one of the few ergonomic keyboards on the market that comes with proper Apple keys, like Option and Propeller and it has all the eject, volume and power keys over to the left.
It's lovely to type on as well, with proper clicky, clicky keys and none of the mushy softness that Apple keyboards seem to have acquired of late.
Oh, and the best thing about it? No freakin' number pad to get in the way. I'm sure there's a good reason for putting number pads on keyboards, perhaps they're for people upgrading to computers from calculators or something, but really, when you're my age you really don't need to be made to stretch that extra few inches to reach your mouse...
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