Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayshan | Hacker News Reader

There's a picture of the new Microsoft Ergonomic Desktop on The Verge. So sad that the keyboard is wired and not TKL :( Somewhat normal function keys though compared to the Sculpt. Mouse is also wired.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21247234/microsoft-surface...

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W1Uqdi9jgOACKGZQ_CEJVgGbxdw=...

View on HN

Wired devices are way less fiddly for serious and professional use. No need to ever bother with pairing with the host, keeping a battery charged, or anything else; they will just work out of the box, and will keep working for the foreseeable future.

Yes and it's not like they're going anywhere. Especially on the keyboard the cable is a non-issue IMO. I highly prefer wired keyboards. The only reason to have a wireless keyboard is liking the look of a total wire-free desk (which I don't care about).

And with the mouse it's just a minor annoyance (empty batteries are a bigger one so I have that wired too).

Wireless is also an attack vector. Bad actors can potentially listen in on what's being typed.

For the average user it's NBD, but for large companies it's different.

The current Sculpt Ergonomic desktop is wireless and I have had a lot of issues with it- if I plug it into my USB-C hub, it randomly misses keypresses. So I have to plug the dongle into it's own port on the other side of my Mac.

OMG ME TOO!!!!

I love that keyboard so I put up with moving the dongle around but damn I hate it too!

I really wish there was a wired version!

That is getting pretty close to being a split ortholinear layout [1] (especially the left side).

I'm almost surprised that they haven't made the switch to a vertical staggered key layout [2] yet for some of their Ergonomic keyboards. I haven't tried one myself but it seems like it would improve the ergonomics somewhat (at the cost of having to relearn some muscle memory).

[1] otholinear: https://i.imgur.com/br7Z4Gf.jpg

[2] vertical stagger: https://i.redd.it/kbgjlube09e41.jpg

Are either of those for sale anywhere? Or do you have to build them yourself?

I've been meaning to buy a split keyboard for some time but I can't find a good vendor who sells complete keyboards w/o tons of LEDs or weird wooden designs. I just want a straight forward mechanical keyboard style one.

I'm not sure about those exact models but there are some links to pre-built ones in this /r/ErgoMechKeyboards thread [1].

edit: Just found this list of a bunch of split keyboards [2]. You should be able to find something on there.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/f5h3d6/s...

[2] https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

Thank you, both of those are helpful. I'm happy to see the market has matured a lot since I last looked.

I just want them to come out with an external trackpad! There don't seem to be any options for an external "precision" Windows-compatible trackpad.

This seems to simply be the budget keyboard from mid-2019 with a mouse added in: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4523191/use-microso...

It will probably take a bit till they iterate on the premium, wireless one again.

Hmmm... Interesting, they have dedicated emoji and office keys... I wonder what the office key does? also they got rid of shared function keys which is great, shared fn keys never made sense on a large full layout desktop keyboard, no one is getting this keyboard because it looks compact.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com