Hacker News Reader

Comment by maltalex | Hacker News Reader

This was always my question too. What’s the point of a 300$ keyboard that minimizes movement when you have to move your entire hand every time you you need a mouse?

Completely avoiding the mouse isn’t an option for some workflows.

I wish there were more keyboards with IBM-style trackpoints.

View on HN

> What’s the point of a 300$ keyboard that minimizes movement when you have to move your entire hand every time you you need a mouse?

Because I rarely use the mouse (trackball in my case), and if I type on a 'regular' keyboard for any extended period of time I will experience discomfort; whereas on the Kinesis Advantage I don't experience any discomfort.

300$ seems like a steal to me!

(Not that I paid. My company did.)

What’s the point of a 300$ keyboard that minimizes movement when you have to move your entire hand every time you you need a mouse?

The point is to reduce strain and fatigue of the fingers and wrists, not to reduce movement for the sake of reducing movement.

Mouse ergonomics is a completely separate can of worms.

I was talking about reducing strain and fatigue. Moving your whole hand over the mouse over and over again introduces quite a lot of fatigue. This is why the keyboard and mouse aren’t separate problems.

A keyboard that doesn’t have an integrated mouse solves only part of the problem. That’s why I like having a trackpoint for small mouse movements.

The Advantage in my case helped reduce the strain of the positioning of the hands. When I have to travel and switch back to the MBP's keyboard, the position of my hands on the keyboard definitely causes discomfort if I have to type for more than a few hours a day.

I don't mind having to switch to the mouse. It gives me time to take both hands of my keyboard and change their positions even if for a little bit.

I've been meaning to hack a trackpoint into my Kinesis. It's been done before, mounted where you can control with the thumb so you don't need to move your hand at all.

Are there trackpoint kits? Or do people disassemble old keyboards?

Only seen it done with ones removed from old keyboards. On at least some (including the IBM SpaceSaver IIs that I have), it's on a separate little board. I believe the outputs are pretty simple to decode.

I miss using a macbook keyboard for exactly this -- could easily use the trackpad with my thumb with little hand movement. My ideal keyboard would be something similar to the current microsoft surface natural keyboard with a macbook trackpad below it.

Ultimate Hacking Ketboard willnhave trackball and trackpoint modules.

Right. There’s also tex yoda 2. Both of these cost about as much as the kinesis, but they don’t seem as well designed.

The ideal for me would be a two-in-one. An ergonomic, well designed keyboard like the kinesis, with the addition of a trackpoint to avoid lifting a hands for small mouse movements.

The TeX Yoda has a terrible built in mouse. Highly recommend steering clear. I've been a thinkpad guy for the past 15 years or so, and I jumped on the opportunity to buy one when it came out. The sensitivity on the trackpoint has a really weird velocity curve and I never managed to get it to feel even close to right on any platform.

Building keyboards has been a hobby for a minute, I've settled on an HHKB that I've gutted and replaced the controller with a Teensy 2 so I can program all my mouse keys and shortcuts in hardware, therefore avoiding the inevitable discussion on who's mappings to use when pairing. You can often find good offerings for sale/trade on reddit/r/mechmarket.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com