Kinesis Advantage, the long view

I've had a Kinesis Advantage keyboard at home for about a year now and
a second one for work for about four months.  Both are remapped to
Dvorak, as were my previous keyboards.  I thought some of you might be
interested in the long term assessment.

For those not familiar with the keyboard, these images may help.  The
first is a photo of hands over the keyboard, the second a diagram of
the key layout:
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/images/cont-above-hands-blk630x390.jpg
http://www.ergocanada.com/products/keyboards/advantage_images/kinesis_advantage_dvorak_qd_751x553.gif

I'm typing about 55-60 wpm on plain text (slower on coding) - that's
maybe 5wpm faster than I was on a traditional keyboard
(Dvorak-mapped).  Certainly not a huge difference in speed.  The
Advantage is unquestionably a lot more comfortable than a regular
keyboard.  I'm happy with the multitude of keys under the thumbs, in
fact I really like it.  Having the backspace and Enter there is
absolutely awesome.  The only thing that's caused me ongoing problems
is the new bottom row: they're down below the regular bottom row, kind
of where your space bar would be on a traditional keyboard, but these
are operated by curling your fingers in.  There's some punctuation and
the cursor keys.  I think it's a good idea but I still fumble them
occasionally, my favourite blunder being to press "M" instead of the
up arrow, or vice versa.  I still hate the function keys (small and
squishy membrane keys), and whenever I want to play a game that
involves much keyboarding, especially if heavy use of the cursor keys
are involved, I plug in a traditional keyboard so I can have my cursor
keys in an inverted "T" layout.  From a mechanical point of view
they're just fine: I've had no problem with either one - and don't
expect to, they're well made.  Mind you, I haven't tried spilling
coffee on them: you won't either if you own a $300 keyboard.  I also
own a foot pedal for each of the keyboards, but have found it money
mostly wasted (except from the point of view that it was a worthy
experiment).  It's not that I don't like the pedals, I think they're a
great idea and they work fine.  But I shift in my seat constantly, and
move my feet all the time.  The pedals require your foot always be in
one place, and that doesn't work for me.  I liked to use it mapped to
the Windows key, which I use as a modifier for special commands under
Linux.  I use the built-in Dvorak remap, but the keyboard is capable
of being completely remapped by the user, one key at a time - it then
remembers your remapping through power outages etc.  It requires
attention to detail to do the remapping, but it isn't difficult.  I've
made two sets of key swaps on top of the Dvorak remapping, most
notably Escape and Delete have switched place at home (but not at
work).  Why?  I'm a heavy vim user, and vim uses Escape heavily.  But
at work I use Windows and Dreamweaver so that swap didn't make sense.

I'm not sure how this reads, maybe I sound negative ...  I wanted to
give a view of the bad as well as the good.  For me it all adds up to
a very positive experience: I love the keyboard and highly recommend
it.  You WILL have a significant period of adjustment, perhaps a week
to as much as a month, and I don't think they're good for gamers.  But
otherwise, they're great.

If anyone has questions, feel free to email me on or off list.  On
list is probably better: I know there are a bunch more Advantage users
on the list.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
[email protected]