Personally I’m not sure it’s worth it longer term. 5x3+2 is my preference but I’m doing this to sort my layers so I can try some of the unibody split keyboards that have less keys to go round.

Somewhere in the middle? More of late night realisation than anything else.

Beautiful design. I love the casing over the nice view and roller.

I just worked out that a rotary controller can be mapped onto a mouse scroll wheel, which suddenly makes a lot of sense. I’ve been sitting here thinking “why would I want a volume knob? Why would I want two?” Is there anything else I am missing about rotary controllers?

I think once you accept that standard keyboards are laid out as they are just by convention and nothing else, and that moving to a new layout will take a bit of time, the prospect of having a keyboard where everything is exactly where you want it to be becomes quite thrilling. This is actually my first bit of real typing using Colemak DH. It is excruciatingly slow to touch type but I didn’t know it at all two weeks ago. In two more weeks time I’ll have my first split keyboard in my hands. So it’s definately doable…

I would add “and only if it is a fresh build” because while I am interested in seeing new builds, and I do want to support vendors, I don’t want to be spammed here. A pinned thread for vendor news as the other commentor suggested would do just as well for info.

I almost feel like my piano training has kicked in with my QWERTY technique. I almost move my left hand above my right sometimes to hit certain keys. It’s definitely a lost cause and you are totally right: we know so much more about ergonomics now that if you are going to learn to touch type at this point, you might as well learn an alternative layout.

I’m really enjoying learning it so far. Semimak sounds really interesting. I think what I take away from reading about alt layouts is, beyond a certain point, you need to start to understand the dexterity and capability of your own fingers because metrics won’t tell you much more than the very basics of what a layout can do.

There’s only so many rabbitholes I can go down …

Ech what a nightmare. I figure I have one shot at an alt layout before my brain plasticity finally gives out so Colemak DH it is.

I hear you re: row stagger. I actually just realised in terms of touch typing the keys on the bottom row are shifted one column/one finger compared to a column staggered keyboard. Just as well I caught that before CDVK got too engrained.

I’m really loving it. Something clicked when I started adding the top row to my drills and now its actually fun. I’m deliberately taking my time so I don’t pick up any bad habits. My QWERTY typing is fast but atrocious in terms of form.

What’s really annoying me right now is that I’m learning on a row staggered keyboard and I know fine well that the V and K should not be there, but, for the purposes of the exercise they are and I have to kind of bear with it and hope that my new muscle memory will correct when my little Ferris Sweep arrives.

Very nice. I just ordered some small tetrahedral-shaped beanbags from Etsy.

Yes that extra thumb key is awfully tempting. It was touch and go whether I was going to start my ergo keyboard journey with two or three thumb keys. In the end I went with a hunch that I didn’t want to pull my thumb too far under my palm for that third key but having escape or a leader key right on my thumbs would be very powerful.

The IBM … I’m going to say joystick … is so underrated. If I do go down the path of designing my own board I will definitely be looking into getting one on there in place of a switch or nestled in somehow.

Btw for great justice I have ordered a small Wacom Intuos and a Logitech Ergo M575.

Oh those look like fun. It might be a bit beyond me right now - the combination of everything - but yeah for the future I quite fancy that.

Yeah, I have seen all of them. I’m not going to discount them completely because they are on the small side, but they do all seem to be from the land that time forgot and almost designed for kiosks or something like that? As you say one has a PS/2 connector. Mice have come on leaps and bounds with support for multiple bluetooth profiles, great tracking and so on. I guess there is very little demand for trackpads.

Ok here is a slightly tangential answer to my own post.

Wacom Intuos Small

It’s a bit on the large side at 20cm x 16cm but it has bluetooth and supports Windows, Mac and ChromeOS, and can be used as a pointing device with advanced gestures.

That’s 4cm wider and deeper than the magic trackpad with probably the same active area (the outside edges of the Intuos aren’t touch sensitive) but it is almost half the price of the magic trackpad and fully supported on other operating systems.

I’m kind of tempted but it is kind of huge.

If there was an officially supported way of getting the Magic Trackpad working properly on Windows and ChromeOS I would probably just get one. It’s weird that there aren’t more options out there for trackpads.