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Comment by 37ef_ced3 | Hacker News Reader

I buy computers from System76 and they are good. Highly recommended

But if it's not a wireless ergonomic keyboard, I am not interested

The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless keyboard, despite its flaws, is the healthiest and most comfortable keyboard I've ever used. Started using it four years ago and I'll never go back

Ideal if you edit in Vim: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Wireless-Desktop-...

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> But if it's not a wireless, split, ergonomic keyboard, I am not interested

Not wireless, but I've recnetly gotten a ZSA Moonlander [1] keyboard and I'm in love. It's wonderful. Like the System76 one, it's open source and you store the keyboard config on-device.

[1] https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/

Ergodox and the like have one big problem: hard or impossible to use if you need a layout for a language that has more than 26 characters.

I disagree. This keyboard has programmable layers that can be switched between quite easily. For instance, I have a whole layer for greek characters because I use them a lot whilst programming.

Developing muscle memory for the layers takes time, but it's not so bad.

What does this have to do with the fact that I need all of my russian alphabet when I type in russian?

The problem is that the default russian qwerty (or rather йцукен) simply won't fit. You will have to bind additional characters to weird places, which will be messing with your muscle memory or use layers, as you've said. Which is super annoying. Imagine you have to switch to a different layer when you need to type 'z', 'h', 's' and 'p' for example.

The Moonlander has 70 keys on it. If you don't want to split up your alphabet, just assign your whole alphabet to the first layer and move things like punctuation or numbers to the next layer There's plenty of room on this keyboard for bigger alphabets.

Again - the issue is that this breaks default layout. Obviously any keyboard with at least 33 keys will be enough for me to just place the alphabet on them. The problems is that this breaks everything.

Anyhow - after a bunch of keyboards all I can say is that 60-65% ones are the best. I get everything I need - not more, no less.

I took the plunge a few months ago on the Moonlander hoping to alleviate wrist pain and have not regretted it one bit.

I wonder what are the thumb keys mapped to? Or what did you choose to map them to?

The base layer of my left thumb cluster has Space, Ctrl, Alt and a key for switching layers. My right thumb cluster's base layer has Enter, Tab, Backspace and Esc.

Left is space, backspace, command, and a macro for Raycast. Right is escape, enter, tab, and layer switch key for media controls.

Moving some of the keys around, like the parenthesis and such makes me shy away from most keyboard of this ilk. I do like the idea of additional thumb keys though. My ideal is an 80% keyboard with additional thumbs so I'm quite tempted by the X-Bows Knight[1].

[1] https://x-bows.com/products/x-bows-knight-ergonomic-mechanic...

If an 80% split or unified keyboard with additional thumbs is all you're after, the Dygma Raise might be just what you're after: https://dygma.com

That does look interesting, although it is a 60% keyboard (no arrows, pg up/down, delete or function keys).

That thing (the System76 keyboard) is fugly. :-) I did just by a fun clicky, expensive keyboard, and not so expensive mouse for home. I purposely didn't buy wireless as I find no point in wireless when these things are on my desk 100% of the time. I just replaced both an apple wireless keyboard, and wireless magic mouse, with a wired Razor Blackwidow and a wired Logitech G403. Not to mention I'm sure someone can snoop on and log wireless keyboards. But, I'm tired of dealing with charging things, or replacing batteries.

I like my wireless keyboard for some applications. Most of the time my keyboard is on my desk, but at my music workstation I instead of midi controllers in front of me, but sometimes I need to grab a keyboard/mouse for control. Not having to deal with wires there is great.

I like my wireless mouse too: it moves, and my desk is too crowded to find a good spot for the cord to not get in the way. (with working from home I have a bunch of work related test fixtures taking up space.) Those who have a clean desk won't have this problem - but I've never been able to pull that off personally.

> Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless keyboard

Have you tried the Surface Ergonomic KB?

All the goodness of the sculpt (even better IMHO) with a full layout.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-ergonomic-keyboard...

I don't think the Surface Ergonomic KB comes with an elevated palm rest (which I like in the Sculpt).

I use the Sculpt on my lap, never on a desk

The Surface Ergo is too wide. The Sculpt is more symmetrical and narrow, by omitting the number pad, etc., on the right-hand side

Happy System76 Laptop user here, too! However nothing goes over the programmable, ergonomic split keyboard „Kinesis Advantage 2LF“ ;-)

https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/

ergodox and moonlander come immediately to mind as things i'd use over an advantage2, for native QMK support if nothing else.

In the world of mechanical keyboards I'd consider a kinesis to be mid range. Definitely a great keyboard, not terribly different from a Maltron or other ergo boards.

As a happy user of a Moonlander, I think the Kinesis has some nice advantages, namely the fact that the keys on each split are in a recessed well. I think that might have some ergonomic advantages, but I haven't tried one yet so I'm not sure.

I am a new Moonlander user (for ~4 months now) who switched from a Kinesis1/2 after over 10 years of use. The well feels nice for e.g. the "d" column to be deeper than "f", so your longer index finger rests a little more naturally. I don't think it's a significant world-changing advantage, just one of those nice minor design touches.

Honestly the bigger problem was that after 10 years of use, your hand position with any keyboard will cause you to hold it poorly at first with a new one, if the layout is massively different. The first 48 hours with the Moonlander were rough until I found the proper spacing and setup for them...

Yeah, coming from a traditional non-ergonomic keyboard, it took me a couple of weeks before I could type as fast on my Moonlander as I could on my previous keyboard.

In particular, the keyboard being ortholinear took a lot of getting used to, but I am glad I invested time in making the switch.

I love the MS Nat Ergo 4000 and thought the Sculpt would be a good successor, but find I really dislike it. I find the short key travel hard to adjust to (lots of typos), and the mushy ESC key was not conducive to Vim editing. (P.S. I've a 10 finger touch typist. Learned in school in the '80s on manual typewriters.)

Funny how our experiences are so disparate.

The tiny escape key is a defect of the Sculpt keyboard

But I have caps lock mapped to ctrl (I hit it with my pinkie) and the windows key mapped to escape (I hit it with my thumb)

Almost all hardcore Vim users map ctrl and escape. It's standard practice

Also, I use the Sculpt on my lap, never on a desk

The MS Nat Ergo 4000 is too wide and asymmetrical for my lap. Same is true of the MS Surface Ergo. The Sculpt is more symmetrical and narrow, by omitting the number pad, etc., on the right-hand side

I like my sculpt I have at work. The casing is starting to crack after a year for some reason, but everything is functioning fine.

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