Microsoft’s new Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard →
As a big fan of its predecessor, the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, this is very interesting.
The 4000 had two major flaws: its keys were too mushy, and its right side extended out so far that I practically had to keep my mouse in New Jersey, which isn’t great for ergonomics. After years of using the 4000, I switched last November to the Kinesis Freestyle 2 for Mac since it appeared to fix both of my problems with the 4000.1 It’s good, but not great — the size and keys are both decent but not overwhelmingly better than the 4000, and the physically separate halves easily scoot around the desk and get misaligned from my ideal position. I subconsciously realign it all day. (And, like most other non-mainstream ergonomic devices, it looks like medical equipment.)
The Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard looks nice, is wireless,2 and appears to fix the size issue by splitting off the numeric keypad, but those keys have me worried: they look like cheap laptop-style scissor keys, and have a good chance of being too mushy.
I’ve preordered one anyway. I’ll let you know how it goes after I’ve had a chance to use it for a while.
(I have no opinion on the mouse. I used the Natural 4000’s weird associated mouse for a while, but it was pretty bad. I don’t think Microsoft has made a good mouse since they switched to mushwheels in 2004, which is a shame, because they used to make the best ones.)
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That’s the direct link to the frame for that page. The Kinesis site still uses frames.
Frames. ↩︎
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The Natural 4000 eventually had a wireless version (via proprietary USB receiver, not Bluetooth), but it was terrible, frequently skipping or repeating keystrokes, so I switched back to wired.
I was able to make my wired version appear wireless by overhanging the curved front lip off the desk slightly, running the wire out from under it, and taping the wire to the underside of the desk. ↩︎