I'm curious about the Ortholinear layout though, and how much benefit that confers by itself if you're already using a split keyboard and/or optimized layout. It seems like most people switch all three factors at once, which makes it hard to isolate which ones are the most beneficial. Anyone have any experience switching no factor besides the ortholinear layout?
1. Split or unibody split 2. Moving to a smaller form factor (40% keyboard) so that my fingers don’t move nearly as far from the home row) 3. Ortholinear on a non-split board
I’ve tried ortholinear alone, ortho on split, and row staggered on split. I feel like split is the most improvement in comfort for me in general. But, on a split board I do prefer ortho, if that helps. On a non-split board, I’m not sure ortho has a huge effect for me, I use both regularly and don’t notice a big difference.
I honestly may even rank 40% boards as number one, because of how useful having numbers and symbols so close to or on the homerow is for comfort.
So anyway, those are my two cents from my experience
One minor benefit: the nice thing about external keyboards is the OS layout can be US layout, and you don't have to worry about switching the OS settings.
IMO, being familiar with Dvorak means ortho is an easy transition, since your fingers will already follow a column-discipline. (Whereas, my QWERTY remain hunt & peck; I use ortho with Dvorak, qwerty with row-stagger).
I'd say ortho almost universally goes with with "multiple thumb keys" (2-3 each). This helps a lot with "reduce pinky finger usage, increase thumb usage", since you can move the backspace, enter, escape, tab keys to within reach of the thumb, alongside space. -- Thumb keys also allow for layering, to reduce hand movement from home row.
I think the advantages of asymmetric row-stagger are availability/cost, and its history as the typical keyboard layout. -- If you don't need to share your keyboard with anyone, and can afford a keyboard with straight columns, ortho is nice.