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

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-you-can dept.

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)."

4 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Pinky on the ctrl? by mrjb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
  2. Kinesis Rocks by healy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Jesus saves sinners...and redeems them for valuable coupons"
  3. Errrr by amulder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  4. Re:Just use vi by timmyd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.