So, there are some different levels/kind of keyboard that may be more "ergonomic" than a traditional one. Howe weird are you looking to get?
Re: budget, ergo boards tend to be low-cost DIY kits, but you generally have to do a fair bit of soldering. You can also get prebuilts, but they're not super cheap since it's not like, assembly line production in most cases, it's one person building it by hand. There are some exceptions that are more production, but they won't be as cheap apart form like a Keyboardio Atreus or a Planck or Preonic
Alice layout: Normie layout "unisplit" with a slight split and angle on it. Will be easy to adjust to, minimal ergonomic difference from regular board. But having split spacebar is a big win in itself to be honest.
Regular board, but split, such as a Quefrency or Sinc from Keebio. Layout isn't ergonomic for your fingers, but you can put them at whatever angle suits your wrist, and you can tent them as well (angle the halves)
Basic ortholinear. All keys are in a grid, like Planck, Preonic, XD75, MechWild Waka. Layout is arguably a bit more ergonomic than regular, will require more adjustment. Many of these boards are not split, although some are.
Columnar stagger: Each column is a different height, reflecting the different lengths of your fingers. More ergonomic. Mostly split boards like Corne, Kyria, Sofle, Lily, Iris, Ergodox, Moonlander, with some unisplit boards like Reviung and Atreus. You can use this tool to compare layouts
Keywell/Dactyl: Keys are positioned in a bowl like shape, three-dimensionally. Examples Dactyl, Kinesis Advantage, MoErgo Glove. These will be a lot more expensive if you want someone else to build them for you.
There are tons of different options out there, so you'll wan to start by narrowing down what kind of layout you want and how DIY you want the build to be. The actual builds are mostly pretty straightforward, but most ergo kits do require you to solder diodes and controllers, not just switches. And some of the more esoteric ones have a higher difficulty level, like the keywell boards.
Ortho and columnar stagger boards will take time to learn to type on at speed. Many users also take the opportunity to learn a new non-qwerty layout at the same time since they need to build new muscle memory anyway.
You'll want to pay attention to the layouts when you are picking keycaps. Many ergo boards use all 1u, or 1u plus a couple of spacebars. However, others use ergodox-style layouts with several keys of other sizes. Kitting can be difficult if you want all your keycaps to correspond exactly to what you have those keys assigned to do. Life will be easier if you are a touch typist and willing to make use of blanks or novelties.
This is a really great resource, but just wanted to add my 2c. I've had (or at least used) most of the variations on this list, and if I could do it again, I'd probably just further down the list faster. I'm a programmer by trade so I spend a lot of my time typing, and I can't express how much of a positive impact building a dactyl manuform has had on my wrists (and just general typing comfort). If you have a 3D printer already it's actually pretty easy to put everything together, and you could probably definitely do it all yourself under your budget (so long as you already have the soldering equipment). The kits are definitely going to run you more though. That said, in my opinion, its worth going at least to columnar stagger if you're going to go down this route! (Plus - if you're already relearning to type, do yourself a favour and switch from qwerty to dvorak or colemak or something like that!)
It is about as much made of wood as a new car is made of protective, plastic wrapping. What a load of nonsense. The metal chassis of a computer is about the easiest and best to recycle thing on the whole machine. This is green washing and/or a money grab.
I remember seeing this project on Reddit a while ago, but I was very confused about why some guy’s wooden cyberdeck got a huge article in The Verge until I got to this sentence:
One of the people who liked the Mythic I was Max Novendstern, who is, among other things, a co-founder of the crypto startup Worldcoin.
Haha, totally fair. I'll admit I hadn't seen much about cyberdecks and now am a little annoyed by this article. Some questions about the ergonomics on this one for sure, but still worth sharing I suppose.
Nigel from Flashquark here!
I don't think we have any keycaps with Mac icons on them at this time, but we do have keycaps in general that you might be interested in: Flashquark.com
Aliexpress is good for clone caps. Clone caps are a bit of a touchy subject in the community, but if you realistically weren't going to drop $200+ on GMK caps anyway you can probably live with yourself. Drop also has a lot of sets in their MT3 profile, KBDFans has the PBTFans brand which has some cool sets. For other retailers that sell caps you have:
Cannon Keys
Divinikey
Kono Store
KPRepublic
Mekibo
Novelkeys
Vala Supply
Probably more I'm forgetting. For cheap sets that aren't specifically clones Amazon is probably easiest, but make sure to double check the layout compatibility.
kprepublic sent me a shipping notification with a fake tracking number (so I couldn't cancel my order anymore) and then waited until I emailed them to tell me the stuff I ordered was out of stock and wouldn't ship for 2-3 months. I ended up having to file a chargeback.
I've had better luck with KBDFans for cheapie keycaps.
For in-stock keycaps that aren't too expensive, try Cannonkeys, or Novelkeys when they have a sale. You can also check thocstock. Drop is also an option, although nobody likes Drop.
The coolest keycaps are generally sold as group buys run by dozens of different vendors around the globe. You can check mechgroupbuys or keycaplendar for info on those. (Or browse geekhack)
When I first started collecting I thought that I really needed a 100. Then I got a TKL, then a hhkb, then a 40....
I'm lucky that I don't have to type fast at my job because the constant changing keyboards and having to remember how I programmed the layers definitely slows things down.
The board is the third generation of a design I call the "Overton130". The PCB has now been designed to accept either MX or Alps switches, and either a Teensy++ or a nanoCH32V305. This example is built with Box White v2 switches and various cheap stabilizers (originally Everglide Pandas, but I had to replace a few sets that were damaged from overly enthusiastically removing keycaps).
The main red keycaps are from a G-MKY "Pega" knockoff; the colour's a little darker, so it needs more light to really shine, and the typography isn't as classy as real Pega-- it's clearly aping the Cherry font-- but it's actually available and like $25 per set off AliExpress.
The white keys are generic OEM profile PBT caps, marked with a laser engraver to sear dry-erase market ink onto the cap; it's not the most durable thing in the world, but good enough for occasional hints like media control. The blue "Rawr" key is from the GMK a run.
Many of the keys in the top row are bound to unique features of the CH32v-Keyboard firmware: adjustable "mode" for the OLED display, tuning the debounce and post-debounce hysteresis thresholds, and activating the mini-RPN-calculator mode. The six on the top left are just vanity "Walter Mitty effect" legends until I find use for the extra bindings. Despite the labelling, "Rawr" does nothing, but "Less Rawr" is "Stop" and "Run Stop" is play-pause.
Which apps do you use? I would expect one's experience to vary widely if they were heavy photoshop, or word processor, or IDE, or terminal, or VIM user, etc..
I work primarily in XCode, VSCode, vim and SSH. The nicest feature was customizing the QMK firmware so I have a lot of functionality with my home row keys. For example:
I can hold down J, and use E, D, S, and F with my left hand for up/down/left/right navigation. I also use A, and G in this mode to skip forward and backwards by the word (equivalent of Option-Left/Right arrow on MacOS), and use Q and T to go to beginning or end of line (Cmd-Left/Right arrows). If I press C, X, or V while holding J, it does copy / cut / paste.
If i hold down K, it does all the same things as J, but with a shift modifier added, so I can select single characters, words, or lines easily. If i do 'Del' with 'K', it goes to the beginning of the line, selects to the end of the line, and does a delete to completely clear a line no matter what position the cursor is in.
If i hold down L, i can use E, D, S, and F as mousekeys to move around, with W and R acting as left and right click.
There's other tweaks and layers here and there but the home row changes were the most effective at making me faster coding on this than any other keyboard I've owned.
Oh, that's nice.
I am used to comparable chords with emacs, but I think having this at the keyboard level is more powerful as apps don't have to support explicitly, the OS just sees up/down/left/right arrows etc..
Mechanical Keyboards
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