They can be but they are only a small part of the overall setup. You still need to have proper posture and pay particular attention to your habits.
Different switches can also help depending on your typing habits and usecase.
For me personally having less keys means less movement leading to significantly reduced possibility of RSI. With just 42 keys on my keyboard literally everything is one key away from each finger on home row so I can spend more time typing and mousing around than a traditional full size keyboard+mouse setup.
I’ve invested in a good table and chair. I’m now looking to figure out my keyboard and mouse. I’ve not tried the small keyboards because I thought the cramped space may be worse. But maybe that’s wrong? Any specific recommendations for a keyboard or mouse?
It's all very personal. Partly because you will like certain key switches and layouts, and partly because any problems you may be having may not be solved by the same things that fixed my problems.
Personally, having tried a wide variety of keyboards and layouts (both key pattern and physical keyboard design), I think the biggest improvement is switching to any mechanical keyboard. Anything with Cherry MX switches will be a huge improvement over some cheap, sliding plastic keyboard from an OEM. After that, the particular type of switch might matter to you. Cherry Red, for example, only requires really light pressure. Topre switches are buttery smooth.
For physical configuration, I personally like either an 87 key, or I go all out with a Kinesis Advantage. The Kinesis saved my early career when I developed bilateral De Quervain's syndrome, which is tendinitis in the wrist that starts with the thumb. After years of this, I finally returned to traditional QWERTY 87 key configurations and haven't had a flare-up. I still think the Kinesis configuration (arrow keys accessible without moving the hands, thumbs are used for delete, enter, home/end and PgUp/PgDn) is ergonomically superior, but it's nice being able to jump on any normal QWERTY keyboard without fighting muscle memory.
My personal favorite mouse is the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. I've heard good things about vertical mice for carpal tunnel.
I had a bit of wrist pain a few years (5?) ago, and my solution was a small 10kl mechanical keyboard (from Vermillo) with a good wrist pad (a wooden one) and a vertical mouse. Haven’t had a problem since. Everyone is different.
BTW, every ergonomics person I’ve talked to suggested I ditch all wrist pads because they but more pressure on an already inflamed wrist.
I also got a vertical mouse a while back on a friend’s recommendation and couldn’t believe the different it made. My wrist was starting to hurt a lot. After a few days with the mouse, I was complete pain free. For me it was an instant and complete relief. I never would’ve believed it.
There's a whole world of custom split keyboard options out there that use switches where it's super easy to buy replacement keycaps. You can get keycaps made of PBT which are long-lasting and have a very high "rub" factor so you shouldn't have to worry about rubbing them raw for a very long time.
It's an article written by a mainstream site so I wasn't really expecting them to talk about split keyboards at all but I agree wholeheartedly.
I went from a full size to a 40% keyboard to an ortholinear and now use a low-profile split keyboard as a daily driver.
IME it's so much better for ergonomics with a proper desk setup and seating/posture with the split halves shoulder width apart. Wireless is a great benefit as well if you swap between desktops and laptops.
Open source firmware like ZMK and QMK make it trivial to use splits with Linux, mac OS and Windows and for any environments where the OS is locked down and software installation is required.
Probably using a QMK firmware-based keyboard where you can access different layers and shortcuts.
I'm using one right now (though mine runs off ZMK which is similar but wireless) which is a split with just 42 keys. The rest--numbers, symbols, function keys, etc. are all under layers. The layout is dynamic because holding down different keys makes the layout 'change' as you do so. Holding down the left spacebar and pressing 'Z' sends 'F1' to the computer while holding down another key on the right half turns my WER/SDF/XCV keys into a Numpad, etc.
Yes, both keys send the same key code to the computer, however, pabloescobyte said they’re using ZMK, so the left/right space bar distinction is happening on the level of the keyboard controller.
That's amazing and an insane amount of work! I'm just as amazed at how Chris Sawyer wrote Transport Tycoon entirely in assembly as well though I don't believe he did it in the same amount of time as Wertich.
m68k is quite comfortable to write assembly for, with 8x GPRs (D0-D7) and 8x address registers (A0-A7), all 32 bit, and flat memory model.
8086 OTOH not so much. More like painful.
16 bits, few registers, many opcodes and addressing modes operate with specific registers, and the mess which is segments, needed because 16bit would otherwise only adress 64KB.
What is the contrast/brightness like with these? I've always wanted one for working with two screens on the go but the ones I've seen in public never seemed to get bright enough.
In a cafe or other bright environment they seem to reflect everything around them similar to the way my MacBook screen does which makes it hard to see anything.
I'm speaking only from limited time seeing them from afar though--I've not actually sat in front of one to use or test out in person.
You might be interested in a "field monitor" over in the photography department, though they are often small.
I have a 2200 nit (not a typo) piece of kit: Feelworld P7, very sturdy aluminum body, either camcorder batteries (multiple sleds) or 7-24V, 1920x1200 7" screen, HDMI in & out. Works well. I've seen larger displays.
It's bad. I have a ASUS MB16AHP (claiming a brightness of 220cd/㎡, contrast ratio 700:1) and yeah, in a brightly lit room viewing can be difficult. It's ok under normal office lighting but you'll be out of luck if you have sunlight flooding in. I've been searching for a brighter option but most (all?) the current offerings seem to be based on the same or similar internals.
Still, it's a useful device while traveling – nice to be able to plop a decent multi-monitor setup out of a backpack. My model also has a micro HDMI port (and an internal battery) which can be handy if you need a temporary screen for a Raspberry Pi or a machine that usually runs headless.
Lesser-known keyboards: I use a small 40% (45-key keyboard) or an ortholinear keyboard for my daily work.
On both I have layers for a built-in Numpad, mouse keys (for controlling the mouse cursor without taking my hand off the keyboard), shortcuts for working with text (selecting an entire line, copying and pasting, etc) and various other finger- and wrist-saving shortcuts that help me ward off the likelihood of RSI.
I had a wrist injury in the past and it had a big impact on my productivity as a tech worker so using these small compact keyboards is a real godsend.
Everything I need is literally just one key away from another--no more stretching or contorting my hands and fingers to do CTRL+ALT+DELETE or CTRL+SHIFT+F5 for example.
The 40% keyboard can be used as a daily driver but the ortholinear keyboard is my go-to since it's perfect for both work and play.
My impression is that it's not amazing anywhere, but I've heard Burnaby (for example) is a bit more development friendly than Vancouver.
I'm interested to see what happens in the next couple of years — Ken Sim (Vancouver's new mayor) had significantly improving permitting speeds and decisions as a key plank in his platform. I'm curious to see how he and his party are planning to follow through on that.
> Ken Sim (Vancouver's new mayor) had significantly improving permitting speeds and decisions as a key plank in his platform.
It's nice to say, but I heard a consistent response from the Vancouver subreddit every time this has been brought up that permitting speeds in Vancouver have been more down to how hard it is to hire/train/retain code inspectors, than down to how many red-tape policies they need to evaluate a plan against. Even with a permanent budget increase for hiring code inspectors, given the training time, you wouldn't expect to see the effects within Sim's tenure. So it's questionable what he's actually planning to do here.
(One thing I personally think could help is to get major property developers to peer-review one-anothers' work for its adherence to code; or even to require, as a condition for allowing such firms to do any development in the city at all, that said firms loan some of the talent that would normally be designing to code to instead sit on the other side of the table as code-inspection attachés — like a very domain-specialized form of jury duty. Most large development firms are already experts in local building codes, given that they have to design to them; so why not use that existing talent base?)
> permitting speeds in Vancouver have been more down to how hard it is to hire/train/retain code inspectors, than down to how many red-tape policies they need to evaluate a plan against
I'm not sure about that. I'm sure there's a bit of both but Vancouver has remarkably complex (and often unique to Vancouver) policies for pretty much everything to do with real estate.
Different switches can also help depending on your typing habits and usecase.
For me personally having less keys means less movement leading to significantly reduced possibility of RSI. With just 42 keys on my keyboard literally everything is one key away from each finger on home row so I can spend more time typing and mousing around than a traditional full size keyboard+mouse setup.