Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

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I've been using the ErgoDox EZ for maybe 3-4 years now, and my experience hasn't matched yours in a few regards:

Thumb arthritis: I've started to develop arthritis in my thumbs when grasping, and the EZ doesn't trigger it at all.

Effort to learn: I wouldn't say "serious dedication", but it did take an effort. I had a few bad habits, namely pressing 'b' with the wrong hand (can't do that on a split), and having to look when typing the numbers. It took me a couple days of feeling like I couldn't type, and maybe two weeks before I felt like I was 100% comfortable with it.

I do agree that the thumb clusters, other than the two primary keys, are basically useless. I have some VERY infrequently used keys mapped to them (pg up/down, alt). It also does take a lot of space to use and to carry.

I use a customized keyboard layout particular to my workflow with i3 and vim. I'm SUPER happy with it.

I've been very tempted to try the Moonlander, but I also really don't want to go back to labeled keys. My current keys are blank. If they had a blank set of caps, I'd have ordered it.

Not sure if it's what you mean by blank (not a big keyboard geek, but I just got a Moonlander), but when you buy it there's an option for all of the keys to have "-" on them, so it's effectively blank?

I may be misunderstanding what you're asking, but the ErgoDox EZ has two different keycap shapes.

The printed keys are all the same shape and can be moved around as one remaps the keys. However, this results in a flat keyboard. You can get the same effect by buying another set of keycaps from a keycap company.

The blank keys are sculpted, so each key is unique to it's position or a set of positions. This makes reaching keys much easier from the default position, but makes learning the keyboard harder.

I had started down the path of trying to buy replacement keys, ideally blank but with some sort of a clear spot so the keyboard lights can shine through. That was rare enough, and I guess maybe in the end I might just want clear keycaps for the lights. But there's a whole set of lingo in the keycaps that I felt like I had to understand to stand a chance of getting the correct set of keycaps. There wasn't just a "Here's a ErgoDox EZ caps set..."

I just tried buying and didn't see an option beyond color and keycaps. I had even mailed them maybe a month ago just to double check, because for my ErgoDox EZ they were able to do a custom order with the lit keys but black keycaps. They had said they are still looking at doing an "all -" blank set, but didn't have it available yet.

How do you like the Moonlander? I really love my ErgoDox, but the Moonlander looks nice.

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