Hello from an old school geek with rsi

[synerr]

Hello

I'm a 41 year old unix hacker with over two decades of finger and wrist abuse under my belt.  Few years ago I was diagnosed with mild psoriatic arthritis which affected my hand tendons a bit and more recently RSI made it impossible to spend more than a few minutes a day on my laptop.

Eventually bit the bullet and forked out a small fortune for a kinesis advantage.  A good wrist pad for my mouse helped as well aided with a separate small trackpad for scrolling and clicking with my left hand fingers while moving mouse with the right.  Having now received a few amazon vouchers for my 5th year anniversary at my current job I splashed out on a Kensington Slimblade which should be delivered over the next few days.

Switching to the kinesis wasn't easy.  I am a touch typist and everything just felt out of place.  After 3 weeks the speed to error ratio started turning in my favour.  Above all, a month and a half into it most of the wrist pain is gone although I still get lighting pain in my fingers if I bottom out a key, although nothing compared to using dome switches.

Still to do:
- a new comfortable chair (lobbying wife for Christmas)
- a secondary keyboard for macros, speed dialling, etc
- a control panel for my new home office to control lighting, electric blinds, security cam pan/tilt, etc, etc, ...

B
 

 

[metalliqaz]

I had some serious wrist pain from mousing that I was able to take care of with an Evoluent Verticalmouse.  If you don't like that trackball, then you might give that a shot.

A small, second keyboard for macros and whatnot sounds like an interesting idea with that kinesis.  There are even a few custom tenkeys in progress that will be fully programmable.

Welcome to geekhack!

[hoggy]

Welcome to geekhack - you'll fit right in.

To get you going - a cherry g84-4700 almost fits in the center of the advantage and is easily programmable using Cherry's software.

Take a look at text expansion and dwell clicking software if you get the chance.  Like Metalliqaz, I prefer a vertical mouse to a trackball.

[hashbaz]

Hi and welcome!  I'm a Kinesis Advantage fan as well.

- a secondary keyboard for macros, speed dialling, etc

A lot of the people I work with use small programmable keyboards called X-keys for this.  I think they even have MX switches, though I could be wrong.

[synerr]

Thanks for the welcome and the recommendations.

I think I have embarked down a slippery slope of input devices for input device's sake "devolving" from ergonomics to aesthetics.  Besides the kinesis/trackpad/trackball I got a cheap generic game controller, a magnetic card reader and a 125kHz rfid reader, the last two both presenting themselves as usb keyboards.

In addition I got an Arduino Leonardo clone as it can be programmed to present itself a mouse or keyboard.  The original motivation for the Leonardo was when I was at the worst of my pain and limited mobility and was toying with the idea of fitting in switches/sensors around my desk so I could translate gestures I could carry out comfortably into oft required key combinations or mouse events.

Tks again to all