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Comment by stormbrew | Hacker News Reader

Why does the numpad make your position awkward by its presence? Can't you just pretend it's not there? Every keyboard I've owned since the late 80s has had a numpad and I've hardly ever used it.

Oh never mind, I see your reply to the top post below now. Because it moves the mouse too far away.

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It forced me to either move the keyboard too far to the left or the mouse too far the right, the former causing wrist pain in both hands, the latter causing pain in the right wrist.

So, what fixed my pain was the smaller keyboard, not the lack of a numpad. The numpad just happends to be a big, expendable chunk :)

One of the keyboards I got in order to fix this was a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard, which includes the numpad and is also wider than what I've used before. So getting an ergonomic keyboard actually made things worse in one case.

I had the same problem and solved it by switching the mouse to my left hand. It was awkward at first but then I got used to it.

I move my left hand about three inches to get the mouse. With my right hand (using the old MS split keyboard) it was nearly a foot!

But then how do you cut and paste? Ctrl-Z, X, C, V are going to be hard to reach if you're mousing with your left hand.

Context menu select?

With a mouse in your off hand? That's got to be slower.

Southpaw here. Right thumb on left ctrl, zxcv are all right under my fingers.

This problem never came up for me.

I am an Emacs user with both keys either side of Space bar mapped to Ctrl. And I use Ctrl with either hand using my thumbs bent inwards (or sometimes with my palms).

I also try to use mouse minimally.

I've moved numpad to the left instead:

http://www.a4tech.com/product.asp?cid=1&scid=1&id=54

Southpaw copy/paste/delete shortcuts: ctrl-insert, shift-insert, shift-del

A friend of mine did the same to improve his ambidexterity (he's a surgeon and fine motion is important to him). I can't get used to it though.

I very rarely use my mouse while working, and most of the time I stick to touchpad or trackpoint navigation when I need the mouse.

This is one of the reasons I absolutely love the trackpoint: it allows me to use a mouse without my fingers leaving the home row, and the buttons are conveniently placed where my thumb already is. I'm saddened that the trackpoint is a rarity on laptops these days, I hope Lenovo won't drop it as well.

It's because it takes up space and puts the mouse further to the right. Tenkeyless fans like how you can have the mouse in a more comfortable place.

You have to move your hand more if there is a numerical part. Make the keyboard narrower and you reduce hand movements by a lot. And that helps.

FWIW, when I used focus more on networking rather than development, I always used the numpad for typing in IP addresses. I found it was much faster to use it rather than moving horizontally across the number keys, but YMMV of course. Disclaimer: have a DAS Model S at work and home...can't really do without it (at least when the alternative is a terrible laptop keyboard)

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