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One of the most powerful features of the Kinesis dvantage keyboards is the ability to remap keys. I've been using one for about 6 months with the Colemak layout and am loving it. Below is my layout. I primarily use Matlab. What is your optimal layout?
The 2 things I found most useful were to put the shift key under the left thumb and putting all the arrows under the right hand. This allows me to comfortably hit ctrl+shift with my thumb and move with the arrows on the other hand to select text and navigate around excel.
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High-quality Cherry brand keyswitches To answer that question for yourself, you really have to type on one. In my experience, the springy, responsive Cherry brand key switches used in the Kinesis keyboard help make typing a singing pleasure rather than a grinding chore – so yes, they're definitely worth it for me.
Pairing the keyboardTurn on the keyboard by sliding the on/off switch to the left. Hold the “Fn” key and then tap one of the three channel keys to assign the device to one of the 3 channels. On your target computer, locate the Bluetooth connection screen and ask it to “Search for devices” or “Add a device”.
My version of Kinesis Advantage layout:
For mac you can create custom layout (see TN2056), swap "Caps lock" to "Num pad" (and create layout for "Caps lock") and use Keyboard Maestro (for copy/paste/redo/undo and text navigation). I can put it all to public if needed.
For windows you can use AutoHotKey.
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I ordered my first Kinesis Advantage, I'm very confident I will use it - or a similar keyboard like Ergodox or Axios - for a long time after. I ordered it after a few year of tendinitis-related wrist problems. To relieve these problems I did quite some investigation into different keyboards and keyboard layouts. I tried Colemak until ~50 WPM before finding that it wasn't for me. Though I loved the rhythm of typing with Colemak, the increased lateral movements of my index fingers (due to the location of the D and H keys) were causing physical discomfort. So I went back to QWERTY.
Maybe because of the nature of the Kinesis keyboard (columns rather than orthogonal) I may give Colemak another try, or try another one like Norman or Colemak-DH. Or I just stick with good-old QWERTY, for 30 years hard-wired in my brain...
As I appreciate the thoughts behind any good keyboard layout (any product for that matter), us programmers are often forgotten. It also applies for the default Kinesis Advantage layout, so I too am looking for a better layout.
In my search for keyboard layouts I came across the Maltron layout (Kinesis Advantage is based on - some rather talk of stolen from - Maltron). Loosely based on the Maltron layout I came up with the layout below for a Mac:
I tried to move the less keys as possible, so I ended up moving the cursor keys to a different layer, making room for the brackets and minus/plus signs. I decided to keep the slashes on their QWERTY-location and only moved the backtic/tilde to make room for Escape.
The function row on the blue layer is based on some Ergodox layout I came across (cannot find the source any more sorry), the cursor keys and home/end/pgup/pgdown layout is based on several 60% keyboard layouts. Of course the Cmd + cursor keys still work to.
As you see, I stuck with QWERTY for now. Also note, it's not possible to program this layout in the keyboard itself without the use of a foot pedal (the keyboard only support layer togging instead of holding a modifier key). I use Karabiner to accomplish this (on a Mac).
Please note: I've not put this layout to a test yet, so I'm not sure how easy the brackets, minus and plus are too reach. Or if the Command-keys are located correctly (for Windows I would put CTRL here). The Hyper keys are mapped to CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+COMMAND in Karabiner, which I use for starting applications quickly. Copy and paste are mappen tol Cmd+C / V.
References:
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