Ask HN: What steps do you take to prevent RSI? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What steps do you take to prevent RSI?

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I work from home as a full time web developer.

I've just bought a comfortable chair to help with my back and neck, but the main issue is my fingers.

I've been using my work-issued 13 inch macbook pro for about two years now as my main computer and I'm starting to get pain in my fingers from the trackpad.

So I'm in the market for a mouse to use that's going to be good for me. Any suggestions?

Thanks HNers.

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Regular keyboards and mice are really bad ergonomically, but laptops are even worse in my mind. Just awful to work on.

At work I have a MacBook Pro, but I'm using it with an external keyboard (a Goldtouch split keyboard) and an external pen-like mouse called Ullman Penclic mouse. The keyboard is not a Mac keyboard, so I've remapped a lot of keys using Keymando (works great).

I had really bad RSI problems several years ago, but managed to get it under control, and now I can work without problems. The biggest reason I got better was that I started to use a break program (the keyboard and mouse also helped). On my MacBook I use RSI Guard.

I've written about how I beat RSI: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/ and about Mac OS X break programs: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/26/mac-os-x-break-programs-re...

To answer the topic, if not the actual problem: Dvorak. I was in the same situation as you, starting to get pain in my fingers from typing; tried a few different keyboards, then tried the Dvorak layout and the pain stopped.

Thanks, I will consider this. At the very least it will give me an excuse to buy Das Keyboard and some stick-on lettering.

It's not worth doing that; just leave the keys where they are. That'll have the same effect as far as you're concerned, and mean people who don't know dvorak can use your keyboard by switching it in software. (When I used a physically dvorak keyboard, I had at least five friends who claimed they could touch-type qwerty. None of them actually could.)

I use Dvorak - really suggest you don't buy a specific keyboard for it. Just switch the layout in your OS and learn to touch type. I you want Das Keyboard, get one, leave it blank :)

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