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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.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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).
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.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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....?