Comment by wakeupcall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wakeupcall | Hacker News Reader

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As a general question to anybody that used the Kinesis Advantage and switched to the Glove80: how's the thumb cluster?

The double-length keys for bk/delete/enter/space allows a lot of vertical travel freedom on the hand. Instead of flexing the fingers I can just move the whole hand down and hit the lower row _very_ comfortably while not having to worry about the thumb at all.

I've mocked a few pieces of paper to advantage with the shape of the glove80 cluster and I really can't decide if that's good or bad. While the inner thumb keys of the advantage are pretty far from the key wells, the most important modifiers are all closer compared to the glove80.

Trying it on the mockup, the glove80 cluster placement forces my hand on a higher position and requires the thumb to stretch more.

I've been looking at the advantage 360 and I don't like the complete removal of the Fn row, while at the same time I also hate the old Fn keys on the advantage. The glove80 layout is really nice, but I find the thumb cluster of the advantage to be pretty darn good.

I wrote about this in one of my articles. I use a Kinesis Advantage 360. It's like the Kinesis Advantage but split. I like it, but there are draw backs. Namely, the clusters are not mirrored across both keyboards.

Left Side Backspace Delete Ctrl Alt Home End

Right Super Key Ctrl Page Up Page Down Enter Space

The keys are easy to hit, but the biggest problem is the space bar. On a typical keyboard the space bar is accessible from either thumb. This makes it so that if you are using the mouse and are playing an FPS, then you can still jump. This is not possible on the Kinesis Advantage withought modifying the keys. I use the Smartset program, and have a profile specifically for games that fixes this, but it might be annoying to some

The second is that fact that there is not print screen key on the advantage. I take a lot of screenshots for work so this is annoying. I've set one of the 4 macro keys to be the key combination I need to make screenshots, but again this required some configuration.

With that being said I still like the keyboard. My hands feel great even after 12 hours of mixed browsing, coding, and writing. My posture is better, and I don't get pain in my vertebrae next to my shoulder blade. But there are definitely things I would change if I was making it from scratch. Maybe in the future I'll Diy a dactyl-manuform^1 which has the perfect switches and layout for me.

https://github.com/abstracthat/dactyl-manuform

Due to the 3D nature, it is very hard to mock up with a few pieces of paper.

One thing to note is that the Glove80 thumb cluster plane is at a very different location and angle, compared to the the Kinesis Advantage thumb cluster plane. In fact the Glove80 thumb cluster plane is much lower and slant down gently (nowhere as much as DM) towards the opposite half. OTOH the KA thumb cluster sits significantly higher than the keywell.

Due to the thumb plane difference, "the glove80 cluster placement forces my hand on a higher position and requires the thumb to stretch more" is not the case in reality for me.

I would definitely reposition the thumb cluster on the KA to be slightly lower (no more than 1cm lower really), however I didn't find this to be a problem for me.

I rest my hands with the pinky/thumb at about 15' (that is, the hand is is not with the palm flat but at about 45" compared to the keyboard). If I extend pinky and thumb, they're naturally on the same plane.

If I could tent the halves though that 1cm of difference would be nice.

On the kinesis I can hit comfortably ctrl+alt + "=" (and pretty much any other key on either half) with thumb+pinky, on both halves. Holding shift is also entirely possible with pinky or ring, even in combination with ctrl/alt/ctrl+alt and while typing with the remaining 3 fingers.

Seems a stupid thing to do when written, and maybe it is, but hey .. emacs, and I'm doing it with ease actually. I normally chord the modifiers with one hand and type with the other, but if there's a weird combination I'll just do it with a single hand too.

I could definitely 3d-print an entire glove80 mock if I found a model.

For a long time I've been pondering about just 3d-printing a modified dacytl to fit my own preferences, but it's one of those things I wish to just pay for, have some QC without wasting time, and be done.

The thumb cluster on Advantage is simply too high. Glove80 solved it.

I find the bottom row easy to hit but find the top rows are awkwardly placed. I've got round this by using the top row as toggles for the momentary layers on the bottom row keys, so it's fine. I wouldn't want to press them as part of normal typing personally.

If you the keys to be higher or closer, you can mod the Glove80 with this: https://reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/s/QpHIgtydLK

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