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Ergonomic Laptop Keyboards?
"To that end, I wonder if any laptop makers (perhaps catering to those with wrist difficulties like I am on the edge of) offer laptops with keyboards somewhat like those on the MS Natural, or the old Apple Ergonomic keyboard, that is, with some degree of split for better wrist angle. In fact, in cramped places, it would be really handy even for those with fine wrists, to be able to angle in somewhat more -- on my last airline flight I realized that there is somewhat more elbow room than straight-forward room, at least in the cheap seats.
Ideal, perhaps, would be something like the Kinesis keyboard but simply integrated into a laptop -- it might be a little thicker, but the change would be a boon for certain of us.
Hope your Slashdot readers have some suggestions on this front. Even a small "ergo" keyboard along the lines / size of the famous Happy Hacker keyboard would be ok, at least for moderately long trips ..."
One problem with this is that hands and preferences vary so greatly; does anyone have recommendations on comfortable laptop keyboards, by brand or model? For now, I carry an IBM external keyboard in my car.
If you look at the message subjects, you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.
We're all built differently.
There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.
Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.
If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.
However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your significant other a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!
Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block (or after a wild hour of Counterstrike *grin*)
If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.
All that being said - aren't laptops supposed to be the mobile solution for people? If you're really looking for a longterm solution because you do a lot of typing on a laptop, wouldn't a docking station and a regular egronomic keyboard be better for you?
The butterfly keyboard from the old IBM Thinkpads was nice. Fullsize, nice layout.
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I type about 130 words per minute and do a lot of keyboard. I've been very worried about carpal syndrome as I head toward my mid-30s (and have been keyboarding incessantly since I was 11 or 12).
The bottom line from what I can tell, is that there simply is no such thing as an ergonomic or safe keyboard. The bottom line is that the human hand and wrist did not evolve for keyboarding and even under the best of conditions, it is an awkward activity that will lead to carpal tunnel syndrome and similar problems for a significant number of people.
What we really need are alternative system that would reduce the total number of keys needed to be pressed to form words rather than different layouts of the alphabet (and yes there are such systems out there).
You said, There's no need for 2 shift keys if a single one were properly placed somewhere more centrally.
This is incorrect, IMHO. Something I realized as I began to type faster is that my high school typing teacher's advice was right-on: never ever use the same hand for SHIFT and the key it's modifying. At high speed it's hard to time that SHIFT, especially when you're hand's already contorted to hit two keys. What often happens is that your other hand will hit a key before you let go of shift. By SHIFTing with the opposite hand you maintain a better cadence on the keys and are more efficient.
I also disagree that the CAPS LOCK key should be small. It's large for a reason - (i) for efficiency it has to be hit with your pinky, your least-coordinated digit, and (ii) depending upon the previous key press (e.g. 'G' ot 'T'), your finger might have a (relatively) substantial distance to travel. This interaction os governed by Fitt's Law : "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."
Now consider that the CAPS LOCK key, while rarely used, is critical. For instance, typing 'CAPS LOCK' without it would be slow and painful. But it's use is only justified if the extra acquisition time is less than the time it takes to use the SHIFT key (for short groups like 'RMS,' using SHIFT can be faster). So the faster you can hit the CAPS LOCK key, the more efficient you'll be in cases of long groups of capital letters. This doesn't happen often, but that's one reason why it's so important: you don't have much chance to practice.
I like your other ideas, though.
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answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
You can hear more about it at http://www.dvortyboards.com/
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Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used.
That is not the truth of the matter. The QWERTY layout was indeed developed to increase typing speed. The reason has to do with the original Sholes typewriter being a finger-powered mechanical device. Like all manual typewriters since, each character on the Sholes model was set on the end of a metal bar that struck the paper when its key was pressed. The original keyboard layout was alphabetical. The problem was, that when a typist learned to type fast, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another when they were struck in quick succession. Sholes' solution was to calculate which letters were most often used in English and then position them as far from one another as possible. This lessened the chance of clashing type bars and allowed typists to work faster. Manual typewriters are a thing of the past now, but there's too much "user base" for the QWERTY layout to change it. Not quite as amusing as the way space shuttle solid rocket boosters ended up being the same in diameter as the width of an ancient roman war chariot, but the end result is similarly an artifact.
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Sorry, but I'd have to disagree with you on the topic of a wrist rest. I'm guessing the one on your laptop is made of the hard plastic case that encloses the guts of your machine.
Resting your wrists on that while typing will put pressure on the carpal tunnel, increasing your risk of developing CTS. Personally, whenever my wrists start to hurt from long periods of typing, I move my keyboard to the edge of my desk so that I can't rest my wrists on anything, which I tend to do when I get lazy.
If you can't get out of the habit of resting your wrists when typing, you may want to look into getting some form of better support (I don't know how effective those gel wrist rests are).
Personally, I have a theory that typists did not suffer from CTS, even though they typed all day long, simply because they did not rest their wrists. It was impossible to generate enough force to create a clear letter on paper with a typewriter unless the hands were positioned above the keyboard, with the wrists not resting on anything. Thus, they had to have their wrists raised all day, and there was no extra pressure on the carpal tunnel. This is a big difference from what a lot of "lazy keyboarders" do today.
Another bonus of not resting your wrists is that your arms will get tired every once and a while, forcing you to get up and do something else. This is the perfect time for some of those stretches and exercises that are suggested by all the ergonomicists (sp?)
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The poster said SR, not AI.
SR means I could dictate this article. You are proposing a system by which I could say "Computer, draft a reply to this idiot and show me the next post," and this post would be posted automatically.
Quite a different technology, that.
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There seem to be two keys to this. First, I wasn't copying, so there was no read/translate/transfer step involved. Second, I was on a computer with a backspace key and not being scored on perfection. Both of these are realistic conditions for typing in the modern workplace, BTW.
And I do regularly attain that kind of performance, especially in bursts when I'm pounding out a section of code which contains a lot of keywords I'm used to typing. Yes, fingers are flying; I've noticed (you get where you can actually observe yourself, since you're not thinking of the finger movements) that one finger will be headed toward the wrong key and, before it arrives, the right pinky is already headed toward the back arrow. The true max key rate is probably closer to 150 wpm equiv, because I do a lot of short pauses and backspacing. But this kind of speed is possible on a computer.
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All the alternative methods proposed -- speech, touchscreens, handwriting recognition, blah blah blah, have the same problem; they are slow and inexact. Handwriting schemes actually cause worse CP problems than keyboards. (Today I get writer's cramp if I have to handwrite more than 1/2 page or so; I can type for hours, with regular brief interruptions, with no problem.) I do not have to use some alternate scheme to inform the computer that I mean "here" instead of "hear" or correct the fact that it heard "beer" or "deer" or "fear." If I type the same thing a lot I can get very very fast at it.
I have watched the operators of machines who have to do a few simple functions over and over move from the touchscreen to the keyboard, and eventually become so proficient that their fingers are not visible they are moving so fast -- with no training at all! This is why, in my job, I never code a function in a GUI or touch environment without a keyboard equivalent. The keyboard is not the most intuitive, but it is the most efficient, man/machine interface designed so far.
The scheme of 100 or so keys arranged in ready proximity to the fingers seems to allow a great deal of information to be transferred from a properly trained brain to a machine with minimal error. None of the alternative methods I have seen proposed come close to this, despite the ease with which some might be picked up by novices.
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- There's no need for 2 shift keys if a single one were properly placed somewhere more centrally.
- CAPS LOCK is typically double the size of normal character keys, that's needless.
- The 4 arrow keys could be replaced by a single small joystick-like piece, that could even read odd angles if you set it to do so!
- Consider giving the delete key a shift-function above it, perhaps "Undo Delete" that would easily restore in a cut-and-paste fassion.
Other ideas....?