Poor Man's Kinesis Keyboard: The K'nexis Keyboard

Jon_Aquino writes "For programmers like me with wrist pain (the dreaded Emacs Pinky syndrome), I have made a simple keyboard modification that lets you press the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift keys with your thumbs. Just like those expensive $240 Kinesis keyboards, but made using a $30 K'nex building toy. (K'nex is like Lego but uses rods instead of bricks)."

Comments

Pinky on the ctrl?

[mrjb]

I use the the 'ball' at the base of my pinky to press the ctrl-key. Leaves the pinky free for all the keys it was intended for: the q, a and z as well as capslock,tab and shift.

Kinesis Rocks

[healy]

As a long time (5+ years) user of a Kinesis Keyboard I can tell you that it's the best keyboard I have ever used. It took me about a week to get used to the new layout (I stayed away from root shells) but once I did, I've never looked back. It's the most comfortable keyboard I've ever tried. I own one for home & one for work. Combined with the Evoluent mouse, my hands are much, much happier now.

Errrr

[amulder]

I looked at the article, and saw the photo's, but it hardly looks comfortable. Seems to me that you'd get in trouble every time you let your wrists down.

Seriously... how many of us have good piano skills and always keep our wrists up? Not me, thats what wrist rests are for...

Re:Such a sad choice of editor...

[rainman_bc]

lol you can still get pinky syndrome from having to hit : or -[ or all the time too... Although not as bad as alt.

Re:Just use vi

[timmyd]

If he wanted emacs to act like vi, there's nothing stopping him from customizing it that way or using something like viper-mode.

On the other hand, he's losing some of the greatest benefits of a kinesis keyboard: the keys line up vertically, the right thumb can easily hit the space bar(it's over it) and the enter key, and the left thumb is right over the backspace. For people that enter numbers a lot, there is a foot pedal available that turns the right half of the keyboard into a numeric pad so you can type numbers without your right hand leaving the home row. The more expensive models also support key macros.

Buying a kinesis keyboard was probably one of the best hardware purchases I've ever made.

Sure Sign of a Fanatic

[scotch]

Beware of endorsements from people who say "I've never looked back." There is no surer sign of fanatical devotion to a particular technology than that phrase. You will usually find "I've never looked back" after an anecdote justifying said fanatics use of the technology and especially their decisions to purchase fringe technology for relatively high prices. Ironically, "I've never looked back" is offered to endorse the fanatics chosen poster gadget, yet the phrase, if evaluated honestly, clearly says more about the purchasers fanaticism than it does the quality of the gadget. Indeed, the rational consumer always looks back and re-evaluates purchases, technological trends, long-term quality and alternatives that have come on to the scene; the fanatic, on the other hand, clings to his decions against all evidence and data. Please, if you see or hear "I've never looked back", run away from the source as fast as you can, and do not look back. Thank You.

Re:Just use vi

[TeXMaster]

>If he wanted emacs to act like vi, there's nothing stopping him from customizing it that way or using something like viper-mode.

Only an Emacs user who never actually used vim can think that the viper-mode for Emacs comes anywhere close to something usable.

I had to learn vim because I'm using a laptop, and thus nonalpha keys are clumsy to reach at best. Then I got so used to it I started having hjkldddxxcta things everywhere in other programs :)

Emacs has an enormous appeal for me (for TeX editing, AUC-TeX & friends is awfully close to Nirvana), but I simply can't use it. I value my hands too much. And no, viper-mode, even in the most vi-ish mode, doesn't cut it.