Ortholinear and Laptop ... ?

[el_murdoque]

Recently, I've been pondering whether or not to get a laptop. I've been looking at 13" models, because I want something portable.
The thing is, I'm using Ortholinear keyboards exclusively.

Now I'm asking myself how that would work together. I've worked with PCs from the mid nineties and have stacked a lot of muscle memory on regular layouts, but when I sit down on a computer with a normal keyboard now (after using Preonics for about two years) I type like my father.
Does anyone here have a setup where it's mandatory to swap between layouts regularly and can chime in on if and how that works out?

[nevin]

as long as your layout isn't that different form standard qwerty you should be fine. of course all your layers will not be there on the laptop.

i thought i'd have more trouble after using my viterbi (split 5x7s) for a couple years but the layout isn't that far from standard qwerty. the thing that really caught me up was my layer function keys or other keys that were different between the two.

if you want to stick with ortho, i'd look at getting a portable low profile ortho (wireless?) you can use with both setups. that way if you were just out for a meeting, you could just use your laptop, then when you get back to your room you could pull out the ortho board for the laptop... you can always use your preonic/planck with your laptop. or if it's one of the older ones that used a promicro or similar you could swap it out for one of the wireless promicro equivalents and make it wireless (if you have room for a battery)

depending on what OS you're using on the laptop there are a couple tools you can use to manipulate the built in keyboard. it's possible on mac, win & linux, the apps/tools just vary. just do a search for "key remap {insert os here}"

[parablol]

I don't have much problem switching between ortho and staggered. My guesses for why it's not a hassle for me:

1. I've got 2 work laptops, personal computers, and a lot of different keyboards, ortho and row-staggered. I switch between them and mix things up often. Maybe the frequent switching is good?

2. On top of that, I switch between Qwerty and Dvorak on row staggered keyboards pretty often. When I decided to learn Dvorak, it was really painful for the first month, but eventually I got my muscle memory for it working, and things are fine now. The experience of learning Dvorak "cold turkey" with blank keycaps gave me a really strong touch typing skill. I'm not saying you need to learn Dvorak, but forcing yourself into something new that really ingrains it into you, that's probably going to help you with being able to switch easily between a laptop and ortho keyboard too.

3. My ortho layout is completely customized. It's very Dvorak centric and only needs 33-keys, so it's adaptable between different boards. Keeping things so controlled minimal presents the advantage keeping things easy to remember. Also, because a small layout is so different, it really makes typing on an ortho layout (for me) a very different experience than a regular ANSI layout. Keeping those types of experiences so different prevents me from getting into situations where my muscle memoy gets confused on various layouts. It's like I've just developed a personal "ortho mode" or something... So that's something to consider too.

On a related note, there's a possibility of having a ThinkPad T460s/T470s with an ortholinear keyboard. Gotta keep an eye on this: https://github.com/saoto28/pineapple60

[kajahtaa]

I slow down now if back to a laptop but I have 0 reason to use those trash keyboards. I have two laptop stands btw.

Split ergo (lily58, fortitude60, kyria) and ortho are great for my hands.

Probably 2020 slowed me down since no more taking laptops to meatspace meetings.

[el_murdoque]

I think I'll dig out a decent staggered keyboard and put that into my office to use it for a day and see if muscle memory snaps right back after a while of typing.

My guess is that it will, and that it will also change back again when I'm using my ortho again.