That's a $200 investment on something you'll likely spend more time with than your bed, your car, and your sofa. Over 10 years that's maybe 0.9 cents per hour of use.
It's worth having your perfect keyboard. I have a custom print 88 key wasdkeyboards.com one.
Yes, your work should buy you your perfect keyboard, but if they don't then don't suffer, buy it yourself.
Although for $200 I recommend first considering what keys you'd prefer at what location and how you'd change the layout if you could choose freely, a lot of keyboards and kits are fully programmable and come with wildly different designs. For example, multiple thumb keys are pretty much the most comfortable modifier keys you'll ever use.
You are suffering from Stockholm syndrome. The keyboard commands should be thought of as the primary interface and the slow mouse actions are for beginners or when the slow mouse metaphor is more natural (e.g. grab and drag a screen element). Shoehorning keyboard commands into a menu metaphor has been a cancer computer design for over 40 years.
It's all subjective of course, but personally I'd prefer to be able to use any keyboard anywhere without much drama. I don't feel like I'm suffering much, even if it's not my "perfect" layout.
That said, I do have caps lock remapped to escape on all my personal devices. The muscle memory isn't so bad that I don't remember to hit the ESC key on keyboards that aren't mine though.
I'm going to make up some arbitrary numbers, hopefully they'll make it more clear. I use a Planck, which cost about $110. Looking at Amazon, I found an alright-looking Logitech for ~$15.
Is typing on the Planck 7x better? Probably not. Is it 2x more enjoyable? I'd say so! Unfortunately, there are no $30 keyboards that are as good, but I'm fine with paying the big premium because the cheap version is already so cheap.
I order HPE workstations for the front desk, because they invest in the thermal fluid dynamics and sound energy diffusion of their cases. The default benefits are tangible.
Keyboard quality is a factor more when it is the standard you encounter. High quality consistent keyboard experiences would be significant in broad effect, at least I'm convinced that would be the case.
Different strokes for different folks.
> I'd prefer to be able to use any keyboard anywhere without much drama.
I have no drama using other keyboards. Just like I have no drama sitting in chairs just because I have a good chair at home.
Hell, I've switched to Dvorak about 10 years ago and have been surprised at how rarely I type on other people's keyboards.
This is not the perfect consonance with recent idolatry of UNIX keyboards that I imagine a number of proponents believe it to be.
Has there been a study of the ergonomic and productivity effects of various keyboard designs?
I type in the region of ten thousand words every day and I have no adverse physical symptoms, after almost three decades of continuing typing. Not continuous. I suppose continuous typing is inadvisable.
I hope you don't take my comment as derogatory, it's merely suspicious of the whole rigmarole that keyboards are involved in, and I have spent many more days in search of the ideal keyboard,myself. I have serious doubts about my chances of overcoming the importance of screen input devices, so far as my own use is concerned. Really, I can't believe it is impossible to produce a superb quality mechanical keyboard, even inside the tolerances of a laptop. Business margins are desperately short sighted in this regard. I will tell anyone unfortunate to be within earshot, how the first manufacturer of such a laptop will take my programmatic heart until I am thoroughly retired.
The wrist rest should keep your wrists straight and keep them off the cold desk and its sharp edges.
Posture should keep your head balanced over your neck, not holding it forward or backwards. The monitor height should support this, and it should be straight in front of you. Your shoulders should be relaxed and your elbows should be around 90 degrees to help your wrists.
By the way, laptops are not ergonomic. There are no OSHA approved laptops.
The overwhelming majority do nothing. Many folks do everything on their laptop (not possible to be ergonomic) and most desktops lack any sort of ergonomic planning (monitors off center, no wrist rests, etc)
There's a lot of low hanging fruit out there.
I personally use the latest model Apple Magic Keyboard and the thin size seems nice. No need for a wrist support and the keys feel like hair pin triggers when I type. I personally haven’t experienced anything comparable, yet.