In every thread that I've read about the Kinesis Advantage's Function keys, the posters seem to dislike these F keys quite a bit. I'm going to be the one odd out, I guess.
Personally, I like the Function Keys on my Advantage.
I'm not sure if this is the parental syndrome, in which parents don't see that their kid is ugly, or retarded, because their love for them overshadows that.
Here's what I like about them:
- They are different shapes than the other keys
- They have a different tactile feeling
- They take up a small about of space
- They look cool
I like them so much, that if I had the change of having mechanical keys in that position, I wouldn't do it. If Kinesis asked for my opinion of whether they should be changed, I would tell them to leave them as they are.
I don't ever expect myself to learn how to touch type the function keys. I would be surprised to find a typing learning software that attempted to teach their users touch type function keys. In my opinion, people are expected to look at those function keys in order to press them. Generally, they offer special actions, which are expected to be done rarely. For example, browsers have the page reload function key, the fullscreen key, etc. Games have quick save and quick load. With that kind of expected use-cases for those keys, it's easy to go for days, if not weeks without pressing them.
I've read some threads where people were saying that the function keys were deal breakers for them, because they were not mechanical. I find that to be sooooooo the wrong thing to judge this keyboard on. The function keys on this keyboard should be a non-issue when deciding whether this keyboard is awesome.
EOT
