Keyboards are another simple thing to replace to make working at home, or even in the office much more enjoyable and help prevent carpal tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries.
Now, the damn 30 dollar Logitech junk is NOT what I am talking about getting. You are just as well off with the cheap keyboard that came with your computer. Now, Logitech has made bank selling these keyboards with rubber dome keys in them. 95% of the people in the world are happy with them. BUT, if you are like me and spend a significant portion of your day on the computer typing, you can do so much better and relieve the finger and wrist strain.
So what are the options???? They are many and varied. Remember the Microsoft Wave keyboard? Logitech has a couple of bent keyboards too. There are many mechanical keyboards that mimic this layout. But wait, what are mechanical keyboards?
Instead of a piece of rubber with contacts on it for a key, a mechanical keyboard has a MECHANICAL switch in it. You are physically pushing the stem down to make contact. The original keyboards were all mechanical. Cherry was a company that had one of the first patents for their switches. Today most switches are Cherry compatible.
Now withing switches there are two camps. Clicky and Linear. I bought Linear switches for my daughter on her keyboard because she games. Linear are smooth, quiet and quick to type on. Great for gaming, good for typing if you like smooth and quiet. The second camp is where I land, clicky, and the louder and stiffer the better! I run Purple Pandas in my keyboard for work. Firm, clicky and smooth.
How the hell do I know what I like?? Find a local keyboard meetup and talk to the people there. See if you can catch a meetup and feel some keyboards. Or, if you can find a local store that sells them, go try some out. Best Buy usually has Corsair and Razer there. Both clicky, but a start at testing. One of my first mechanical keyboards for work was a Razer Black Widow.
Once you decide which keys you like, what do what keyboard should I get. That is the question that people hunt for a while to decide on. A lot of people want mechanical keyboards that are standard layout just like the ones they are used to, which is a fine choice if you don’t want to spend time to learn a new layout. BUT, if you broaden your desires a little you can get some bang for the buck.
Split keyboards are where I live. The two halves can be moved apart and set where they are the most comfortable for me, no shoulder strain, wrists at a natural position. Some of these if you care to look them up online are:
- ErgoDox (my daily driver)
- BFO-9000
- ErgoDash
- Kinesis
- Iris
- Quefrency
- Nyquist
- FoldKB
- Viterbi
And I am sure there are a 100 more out there. Those are just ones I know you can buy online today. Now, some of those come in kits to solder together, so you may want to look at some of them like the ones on keeb.io that they sell pre-built so you get them and put keycaps on them and plug them in. Done.
Now there are some people who like smaller “hacker style” keyboards. They have less keys than a standard 104 key keyboard. How do you use them missing all those keys? They use a concept called layers. You hit a key to change layers and on each layer the keys have a different function programmed to them. Mind blowing right?? Took me a while to get my head around it too. Planck keyboards are one of the most popular small form factor keyboards. Only 4 rows of keys and no number row. Steep learning curve in my opinion, but those that do it swear they are faster than a normal keyboard.
There are a host of options all over the map. Once you go down the rabbit hole on the internet looking at keyboards you will find an endless set of choices. Do your homework and decide. I have 16 different keyboards,but I like building them. It is a hobby and I collect keyboards. Happy clicking!!