It starts out slow, but now I'm as fast, if not faster on it than my old layout. If you're interested in the Ergodox, I do recommend really spending some time with the configurator the first month and keep iterating and practicing with it. I have two Ergodox-EZs, one at work and the other at home. Sounds like the end of the world, right?įor people new to the Ergodox, and as others have mentioned, this isn't required for use of the EZ. > But, there are these "small" hacks: It joins Z with the ctrl key. I do agree I am not a big fan of colored LED keyboard, but it might look pretty if you assign it certain colours and have your computer idle. On top of that, the designer does not have to cater to all kind of weird/different niche layouts. Also, that part of the keyboard is not going to have worn use, and the resale value might be higher. Unlabeled has a different purpose: if you (sometimes) assign a different key layout, assign different keybinds which depends on factors (such as the language you type in, OS or program you use, or location you're at) then it is useful. The purpose of showing the values is (initial) learning curve, and reminder. > This makes no sense because the colored keys imply you enjoy looking at your keys and their unlabeled nature implies that you don’t need to look at your keys while you type. I'm cool if this adds a little bit in size/weight.
Weight, size, ergonomics, aesthetics, modability.įor example, I like having Bluetooth on a device like a keyboard, but I also like the ability to turn it off, and barely use it. What you want to optimize for, depends on your concerns. It is a matter of optimization, and using the freedom you have to experiment.
I believe it part of the human ability to experiment, to optimize, to research, trying out something different, or perhaps more negatively to be discontent with current options you know and going for the mentioned solution. > Call me cynical, but I think a lot of the small style keyboards I see around the office are more of a fashion trend than anything.
All in all, it's the best keyboard I can find that still uses somewhat standard keycaps (my reason for never trying a keyboardio I've tried many others apart from that one). The 'use the keyboard as a mouse' is a gimmick, I don't understand why they make that a core selling point in the UHK marketing. But it got there in the end after a few new versions of the firmware. I wasn't very impressed with the support I got with those issues, it was basically first 'try unplugging and plugging back in' and then 'it works for me'. I had firmware problems at the very beginning but that seems to be OK now. The wooden hand rests are getting stained after 2+ years of use, but for the rest they're nice. In terms of build quality, I like it as much as the Ergodo圎Z I hope they'll finally come through with the extensions (only 4 years delayed.) because the thing I miss most from the Ergodox are the thumb clusters. Still, if they'd make a version with an additional function key row, I'd buy it in a heartbeat not having them I consider a trade off for all the other good stuff (split, solid build quality, printed caps, tiltable, mechanical keys) I did spend the time to set up AutoHotKey to do some other types of global hotkeys (open keypass or other often used software, some accented characters, that sort of thing) but that wasn't too bad.
I haven't had to re-learn bindings or manually remap keys in software for years.įor things like 'rename' in explorer.exe (F2), so things that I do really a lot, it only took a couple of days of practice to get used to the extra modifier. The main advantage is that I no longer have to contort my hands to do things like shift ctrl f5. What I used to use them most often for was in Visual Studio (start debugger, run, build, that sort of thing), but what I ended up doing was basically hard-coding all those commands into a custom 'layer' of the UHK, so that (even with standard key bindings in the software) I have more logical (less chording) keys to do all those things. I've been a hardcore vim user for 20+ years and this is the least of all potential problems, so if this is what you're worried about, don't be.įunction keys - it took me a while to get the keycombos into my muscle memory, basically it takes the extra modifier that the UHK has to access them.
I've remapped the top left button to be escape in the normal mode ('layer' I think it's called in the UHK), I use shift to get the tilde, and I hardly ever use the backtick - I think I have it mapped somehow but not sure.