Sorry for the delay in posting my impressions! I've had a hectic couple of days. The keyboard is now on its way to Zanth. My impressions follow.
So after having spent almost two weeks with the Advantage---not having used it all the time, mind you, as I did have to use my laptop on occasion---I have to say that its biggest strength for me is the hand separation. Seriously, I loved it. It made it viable to sit back in my chair and type that way. The second big advantage is overall comfort; I really felt like the rest position was quite natural for my hands.
I bought a TE a couple of months ago, and that was my first experience with ergonomic (except some miscellaneous Microsoft keyboards here and there) as well as my first long-term exposure to a mechanical (I had picked up a keyboard with blacks and one with blues for about a week). I find that the TE strikes a good balance between a standard keyboard and the Kinesis. It is a good size and the keys feel nice (I didn't get to compare them side-by-side, but my first TE used blues and the replacement uses browns, and I think I like the blues better).
However, the big problem with all of these alternaboards is the funny placement of non-alphanumeric keys. As someone who spends a lot of time in the terminal (and some time coding too, though I didn't get to do any on the Kinesis), this messed me up big time. While I was typing slowly at first on the Kinesis, I'm sure I can get used to the alphanumeric keys pretty quickly (ditto for the TE); but that's because I use them all the time! The non-alphanumeric keys are used more rarely and hence having to use them in non-standard locations really just results in a lot of swearing. I had a friend of mine give the Kinesis a go, as he had always wanted to try one---but after just a couple of minutes of exasperated swearing and "oh my God"s he gave up. I definitely can't blame him. That said, though, the placement of the non-alphanumerics is definitely better on the Kinesis than the TE. I'm out of town now but when I'm back and have my desktop configuration finalized I will definitely be messing with the layout of the TE.
Like I said, I started off pretty slowly on the Kinesis, and that loss in speed is pretty annoying. It doesn't feel quite worth it at first. I set up my desktop with Arch so did a lot of Linux command-line stuff. Once set up I used it for basic daily work (email, Web stuff, but no coding; all of my files for that were on my laptop). Now that I'm on my laptop, though, I am feeling the difference in comfort rather markedly. Still, I can't help but wonder how long it would take to bring my speed back up. I've never had any RSI issues, and I've been typing a lot for almost two decades; but then again I'm relatively young, so I wouldn't expect to. It seems sensible to try and stave it off, but obviously it's hard to get motivated about something that is so far away. I have also played a lot of piano over the last two decades, and I can't help but wonder why we don't hear so much about pianists with RSI issues...
Now, for the more specific comments:
- What is with those ridiculous rubber keys?
- Why the hell does this keyboard make noises? The noises for the lock keys is especially hilarious. I remap Caps Lock to Esc (yes, I'm a vim user) and every time I hit it it makes the funny noise.
- Why no Windows key? I use it for shortcuts
- I think I have small pinkies. I have trouble hitting the Q and P keys with my pinkies. I think my pinkies are rather small. That, combined with my usual hand position (fingers relatively flat) makes it hard to to reach these keys. It gets better if I move my wrist up a bit so the fingers curve a bit more.
- I like the 20-degree angle that is induced on the hands. It feels much more natural than 0 or 90, but not as much as I imagine a 45-degree angle would.
- I thought I remembered reading that you're supposed to keep your wrists off of the keyboard. I never did this. I tried taking them off, and I felt like I typed faster, but it was too much to remember to keep them off.
- The arrow key placement is retarded.
- I am a left-thumb spacebar person. The space key on the Kinesis is on the right side.
- Like I said about the non-alphanumeric keys, the placement is better on the Kinesis than the TE. For example, the dash/underscore is on the right side, while it's on the left on the TE. I much prefer having it on the right.
That's all I made note of; if I can think of more I'll add it later. Thanks again to sordna for sending his Kinesis around; I really appreciated the chance to check it out!
