I eventually wound up with Kinesis ergo keyboards and stopped being much "into" keyboards; they are a means to an end: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/07/17/further-thoughts-on-the-k....

Now I have an Advantage 3 with Box White switches, after admittedly talking to an Upgrade Keyboards key switch sommelier, which I admit somewhat undercuts my first sentence in this comment.

> key switch sommelier

I genuinely hope this is someone's official job title somewhere.

I'm imagining some fancy and twisted vilain's startup operation as in a 90's hacker movie.

"How about some cherry mx blue and caviar while we take over the world?"

I switched to advantages more than 20 years ago, but i still keep building new mechanicals, a couple for me (playing games on an advantage is ... hilarious), some for friends. But I hear this. I went to a 360pro with browns (because I ordered it direct before the upgrade keyboards stuff went live). Maybe I'll swap them out some day (one of the used advantage 2s I picked up a few years back was the RedLF model and I thought I'd hate it, but for 50$ who can refuse, but I found myself preferring it over the brown model).

I love my Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard, it's saved my hands/wrists. How's the 3 in comparison?

The 3 is basically the same except you have real F keys and can upload settings to it via USB. Both are great keyboards. I’ve used them for well over a decade.

I went from 1's and 2's w/ custom controllers to a 360pro. It's largely the same board in terms of geometry. There are a few more keys, which are welcome, it's ZMK programmable (pro only). The writ wrests, extra, are better and don't seem to deform/wear out like the old ones. It's much less 'hollow', feels much more solid. The tenting is pretty awesome, the split is welcome. I would buy the pbt keys for extra $, the keys they ship are shit. I also pulled the DSA homerow from one of my advantages and used it here, they moved away from those special home row caps for cost reasons.

I recently purchased an Alice format ergonomic keyboard, the keychron k15 pro [1]. It has a split design, but otherwise it’s totally flat. How much of an improvement do you think a more ergonomically shaped keyboard l8ke a kinesis makes?

[1]: https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k15-pro-alice-lay...

i really miss the 12 or 18 macro keys to the left side of the keyboard of the ol logitech G15 and G110.

have you used this for gaming? specifically FPSs and MMORPGs where left hand needs easy access to the right side of the split-keyboard?

No, don't know how this works for gaming, my gaming is limited to some formula 1 on an xbox.

I have been using the Freestyle Pro for the last 4 years now and it has ended me thinking about keyboards. I was really looking forward to the new super fancy one, but that felt too expensive when I already have one I am happy with it. ~600 Euros in DE when I remember correctly.

Same here. I've been a Kinesis fan since 2012 and went through several Freestyles, and for the last 5 years or so I've rocked the Edge (basically a Pro with rgb lights and mech switches). I was really looking forward to the Advantage360 but the UK price is mental: £590 for the cordless version. Yes, it's a great keyboard that will likely last a decade, but I'm not convinced the gains are big enough to justify the cost.

> eventually wound up with Kinesis ergo keyboards and stopped being much "into" keyboards;

Aren't those like $500 a pop? Handing out that kind of dough for a keyboard sounds like the opposite of stopping being much into keyboards.

Someone owning only one car, and it being a $100k+ Mercedes, probably means they aren’t into cars as a hobby. They found a great vehicle they like and can afford, they enjoy driving it regularly, and it meets all of their needs. There is nothing wrong with that, and, in fact, it sounds awesome.

However, someone who has 5-6 sub-$10k cars in their garage is almost definitely very into cars. It is about tinkering with them, racing them, restoring, building project cars, doing car shows, collecting them, etc. Doesn’t have to be all of those at all, just any single one (including those I haven’t explicitly mentioned there) would be more than enough.

The pricing doesn’t have much to do with someone being into a hobby. My personal guess is that it is more about how much time you actively dedicate to it.

They are, but up until the new split version came out I used the same keyboard since ~2001. I picked up a couple more for sub 100$ when i saw them on craigslist/offerup. One for home, one for the office, a spare, and one to lend out.

Like others I credit my first kinesis with saving my career. I was starting to get RSI issues, doctor put me in braces and I showed him the kinesis site to see what he thought about their claims, if any of his other patients had tried. He thought it passed the smell test, I bought one the next day and drove out to the HQ (they are near seattle) and picked it up.

It takes a bit to get used to it, especially if you aren't a strong touch typist. The columner layout is weird at first, the wells are weird at first, the thumb clusters are weird at first. Within a month I was back up to speed and was able to shed my bracers soon after.

>Aren't those like $500 a pop? Handing out that kind of dough for a keyboard sounds like the opposite of stopping being much into keyboards.

A keyboard can last 20+ years, while a computer around 5 years before it becomes obsolete, more or less. People buy other keyboards because it’s missing something. The kinesis while not perfect is the best keyboard you can buy without building your own from scratch. Nothing comes close, except datahand, but they don’t make those anymore. I stopped buying keyboards after the kinesis.

Depends? Do you go into eagle-search-mode after you exvacated the keyboard buried under piles of paper once a month? Then 500 dollars is excessive.

Do you type things 8 hours a day? Then 500 USD for a keyboard that lasts you two decades is money well spent, if it makes you happy.

I'd almost surely have lost my career in software if it weren't for some solution (the solution of which for me was a Kinesis Advantage). I used the PS2 version for a decade, then bought a USB version, which I've used for at least 20 years at this point. I bought both used, but if I'd paid 2x the new price, it would still have been well worth it.

$500 is nothing for a tool that protects your hands and upper body. carpal tunnel, thoracic outlet syndrome, other kinds of RSI are no joke.

When the alternative is sore wrists and a bad back, stopping you from working altogether, the price is justified.

This said, they used to be cheaper.

I have bought at least twice as many keyboards as this dude - build 15 from scratch plus designed my own low profile hand wired dactyls - and I don’t have a problem.

Perhaps that's normal in the enthusiast communities you frequent, and perhaps it should be normal for members in a society as dependent on typing as modern humans, but you're definitely quite a few standard deviations away from the mean.

Heck, in my engineering office (a bubble if there ever was one) there are only two other people who own more than one keyboard at home or know what a "mechanical" keyboard is, and most of us only have a couple 'special' keyboards. Most of my family and non-work friends have either one or zero, if you don't count on-screen keyboards on phones and tablets or integrated keyboards on laptops (which I don't think should count).

Yeah, it was a bit tongue in cheek. The thing is that once you try something that isn’t the 20 dollar Walmart keyboard but a good ergonomic keyboard, heck, even a half assed, ergo keyboard - you realize how much better things could be. And down the rabbit hole you go. I’m hoping it’s a phase. But it’s also a fun hobby. Albeit a costly one.

I mean, define "problem", because it sounds like you've got an order of magnitude more keyboards than hands.

I mean, I feel fine! one day I will find the perfect keyboard.

Would love to read your thoughts on that, if you’d ever be up to that.

I’m not much of a writer. I do it mostly to optimize comfort while coding. I did think about posting some pics from my journey and my custom Zmk/qmk setup and key layout. But alas, there are many things to work on besides keyboards.

But if there’s something specific you have in mind I can try to answer here.

It's like those articles on gaming addiction where they're like "Anthony (27) spends up to 8 hours a week playing an online game, and his parents are worried about him!"

Meanwhile, most respondents to this post use a keyboard daily for 8+ hours to do work that's valued extremely highly.

Have you seen an auto mechanic's toolbox, or carpenter's tool crib?

Using the wrong tool, or even one which is only a few percent less efficient than optimal, is a mistake.

They’re probably sitting in an office chair that is either awful or good but not set up ergonomically

Betcha everyone is using qwerty too :)

I was going to do the Crocodile Dundee "That's not a knife, this is a knife" routine on this one. Taeha Types, Glarses, Hipyo Tech, Switch and Click, et al, would like to have a word.

And I'm typing this on a fully custom, hand soldered, hand lubed, modded Maja V2 from KBDFans and MT3 keycaps from Drop. Easily costs more than all those boards in that post combined. And let's just say this is not my only keyboard.

It’s a neat hobby!

Honestly, all you really need is to lube the switches. That’s biggest benefit. A lubed mechanical switch, even the cheapest generic red, out performs anything off the shelf.

Totally agree. You can take a basic mechanical keyboard from Amazon with hot swap switches, lube them. Maybe do a basic tape mod (just put masking tape on the back of the PCB) and get like 85% of the benefit of a high end keyboard. This is what I've done for the rest of my family's keyboards.

I presume you use the blue painters masking tape? Normal masking tape tends to turn into either horrible goo or powder.

What does the tape mod do?

Improves the sound, basically.

Gasket mount was the biggest difference to me outside of the initial mechanical switch.

Now I have a number of mechanicals (i love, or did..) that I side-eye as they don't have that hearty damp at the end. :/

(i consistently work at 3 desks, only have gasket on one)

> It’s a neat hobby!

The same can be said about heroin.

I tried all the profiles that existed up to 2021 or so, and MT3 is really the best keycap profile;

You can't just say that and not post build pics of keyboard. :D

(A couple of Das Keyboards here and only one is even modified, but let's say I'm mechanical-curious. :P )

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xesqNgwBmZcrss6P6 I should do some better glamour shots to do it justice :)

I love this. I've spent countless hours and hundreds of dollars pursuing an "Ortholinear Ms Natural 4000 with Cherry MX Blues". Custom laser cut outs. Hand wire wrapped. Custom firmware.

It was tons of fun. But at the end of the day, I keep coming back to my Ergodox. I'm just so used to it now after all these years I don't think I could give it up.

Ditto! A couple of random (not even a custom built) mechanical keyboards, plus an Apple one, plus MX Masters (the most popular keyboard, I assume). Even me, I had tried like 10 times more keyboards. And I’m not even obsessed with them, just your average computer nerd with 20+ years of experience and friends, with whom I can swap keyboards, to play with.

...two of which have near-identical layouts, and one of which I'm typing on now!

I have literally dozens of keyboards: mechanical, split, ergonomic, mobile, the list should end but it doesn't... And yet I'm typing on this split, tented, rubber dome Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic. It has tactile keys, and such an extraordinarily low profile that I can type with it on my lap with my wrists pointed down. It has function keys and I don't need a second layer or FN key to access home/end/pageup/pagedown. The spacebar is split so it doesn't bind like many single-body split keyboards. And it's wireless!

This mass-produced, reasonably inexpensive keyboard is not perfect in any way, but it's 90% to perfect in almost every single way.

Love the Sculpt except for the horrible FN keys and the FN switch.

I actually wired a pushbutton to my first Sculpt to get to the media keys. But now I just map the volume controls to a convenient shortcut in KDE.

I've stood staring down that rabbit hole many times, but then I look at my wallet and turn back.

Every few months I go to https://keymacs.com/ and ponder whether my life would be better without all that cash, but with that beauty in my life.

I've built the same keyboard four times over the last three years.

Version 1 used a Teensy++ and Box Pale Blue switches. Version 2 used a Teensy++ and Matias Click switches, and added a bodged-on OLED. This required a completely new PCB design. Version 3 used the same PCB, and some more Matias switches from my parts box, but swapped in a nanoCH32V305 controller using a little interposer adapter board. It was mostly to work the kinks out of the custom firmware for the CH32V305. Version 4 ended up with footprints to use either Alps or MX-footprint switches and either the Teensy or nanoCH32V305. I now have stacks of spare PCBs and plates, just waiting for a better switch than Box White v2.

Yeah I don’t think any of these folks have that much of an issue. Compare with the people spending thousands or even millions of dollars on little rectangles of printed paperboard and locking them away inside little display cases!

My keyboard journey led me to a committed ltr with a topre realforce rgb, with the dampeners added under the keys. My mouse is a left handed steelseries sensei 10.

Right, 5 relatively cheap keyboards over the course of a few years is perfectly healthy

I'm counting 6 plus a plan to buy another before the end of the year.

yeah, I often have more keyboards than that on my desk at one time. (But as someone who knows Marcin Wichary and Jesse Vincent - I don't have a problem, I am the problem :)