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Comment by nightowl_games | Hacker News Reader

With the numpad, where do you put the mouse (or touchpad)??

Ergonomic keyboards often dont have a numpad for a reason - I find that its the mouse that is more detrimental to my arm than the keyboard. By far.

The numpad is just a distance that I have to travel over when going from keyboard to mouse and vice versa.

Numpads are useless to me.

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A good design puts the Numpad on the left (if right handed)

Primarily, this is because the mouse arm doesn't like being hyperextended to the right, resulting in shoulder issues down the line.

A quick look at this keeb immediately brings a few complaints to me. Primarily, the removal of the function key row always sticks out to me as an annoyance. Vertical space is most definitely not at a premium, as far as ergonomics go.

I bought a detached num pad so I could place it out of the way of my normal typing.

> A good design puts the Numpad on the left (if right handed)

Even better is to mirror it so you can use your right hand's already cultivated muscle memory.

Not quite. The main issue here is the keyboard width and what it does to the angle of your mouse hand. Use of the mouse at angles too far from the forward axis of the body may result in shoulder issues down the line (At least that's what I've read, experienced, and was told by my physical therapist)

It's a DIY kit too assemble. The build guide suggests you can have the numpad on the left side, if you prefer. Or neither, or both.

I would use neither side, to allow tenting the two halves.

The only tricky bit is I think you would need a custom enclosure. Perhaps down the line they will have a slim right enclosure/plate

I dont use a mouse nor trackpad. Sounds like a great keyboard for me :-)

Whereas I prefer the numpad for entering numbers. Horses for courses.

The best solution I've seen personally is my keyboard has a foot pedal, that when held changes some of the normal keys into a numpad. It's a kind of a mode switch. So no need to stretch extra distance or anything.

It's a bit much in terms of...someone had to implement this nonsense, and I had to buy the optional foot pedal. But if I'm honest, it's really nice.

I have this implemented on my current keyboard but via a thumb key.

Same, when I hold a thumb key my right hand turns into the numpad and my left hand is on a set of arrow keys, where s, d, f correspond to <-, \/, ->, and a, q, caps, tab change to control, alt, control+shift, alt+shift, respectively. I've tried to pick up Vim with this setup and always feel like my keyboard makes it irrelevant.

My solution to this problem...

I put my trackball to the left despite being right handed. Didn't take too long to adjust.

This sounds like an exercise in masochism to me.

I also do this. I put a trackpad on the left, so I can let my right arm rest. Every few days I switch which hand is the trackpad hand. Track pads are easy to use left handed especially since programming is mostly scrolling and a few rare taps.

It's a split, so putting the mouse / touchpad in the center is an option.

I agree, remove the numpad. Looking at the images with the numpad attached on the right gave my right shoulder a haunting feeling from past pains.

I have a separate numpad with a usb connection so I can put it wherever. Worth the $20.

Layers are much better. I try to set everything up to avoid hand movement at all.

Put arrows and numbers on a layer and then you can just hold a modifier to access that layer without moving your hand.

Why not just put the mouse between the halves?

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