I love my keyboard!

While cleaning up my inbox tonight (so rewarding!) I remembered that I meant to post an entry based on a response to someone about my keyboard. He wondered if the Kinesis Ergo was worth it. (Note: that’s a deep link into a framed site.) Here’s what I said:

> you use a kinesis contoured keyboard, right? if so can you
> tell me what you think?

I love my keyboard so much I should be in an ad. Seriously, I think
this keyboard saved my career as a programmer. Or at least as a 
programmer who programs outside the day job. I even got my day job 
company to buy me one so I have one at home and one at work.

> - does it really help wrist pain and potentially allow for
> faster typing?

Absolutely for the first. Before I got the keyboard my wrists were 
getting steadily worse. Nothing debilitating, yet. But after four or 
five hours they were really aching. And it was the sort of ache you 
know won't go away with time.

After I got the keyboard in 2000 I've only had small wrist aches (not 
even pain) when I've been working hardcore (12-14 hour days) for three
or four days in a row with no letup. And that doesn't happen so often 
now that I'm married and getting older

Probably for the second. If you're a touch-typist you can definitely 
type faster, I do. If you're not it might be very difficult to get 
used to it.

And if you're an emacs user it totally rocks because the ctrl/alt keys
are at your thumbs rather than having to stretch your pinky with every
chord.

There's also a couple of other benefits:

  - Other people have a hard time typing on the keyboard -- security
through obscurity!

  - Bringing the keyboard to a client site (which I do when I'm doing
 more than 1-2 hours work there) makes me feel like a gunslinger

> - how does it hold up over time? keys still have the right
> response or are they wearing, etc?

Extremely well. The only problems I've had with it were 
self-inflicted:

 - One of my cats chewed on the cord and broke some connection. I 
sent it back and they replaced it.

 - I tried taking the keywell out to clean it and wasn't careful
about how I reconnected it and snapped the connection. (Dumb) 
They replaced it as well.

IIRC customer support was quite good. I had to pay for both 
instances but they replied very quickly.

...

Some people get hung up on the ~$250 price tag. To me
that's *cheap* compared with the alternative
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If any Kinesis folks are listening, I'm available for full-page ads. I have a strict no-nudity policy, though...