Ergomatic Keyboard

I bought an Ergomatic and after some deliberation returned it. Previously I used a Kinesis keyboard for a couple of years and then later (and currently) a DataDesk SmartBoard. I struggled with tendonitis a few years ago and occasionally feel the beginnings of it when I am not careful.

First let me say that the Ergomatic is available for 175 from Teleprint. Shipping is extra, but it was reasonable.

QUALITY

To be honest, the Ergomatic lacks polish, but I think it is in fact solidly built. Take a look at the photos I uploaded, though, and notice the artifacts in the black plastic. And check out the 'O' key -- see how it is out of line with the other keys? I don't actually think any of this had a significant impact on my ability to type, though.

What did have an impact on my typing was the fact that some of the keys tended to bind unless you pushed *directly* down on them, in line with the key mechanism. This was worst with the large thumb keys; my thumbs hit them toward the top. I found that the extra force required to press those thumb keys caused me to press *all* the keys harder, and my tendonitis started acting up. That was, ultimately the reason I returned the unit. I was out the shipping in both directions, but the purchase price of the unit was promptly refunded. Teleprint knows about the problem with the keys binding and is working on a solution.

PHYSICAL DESIGN

Even though I had used the Kinesis for years, I had never been entirely pleased with the feel of it. For one thing, the thumb pads seemed not to be tilted nearly enough, as though they were made for a gorilla's long hand rather than a human's hand. The angle of the thumbpad on the Ergomatic is much better. And I like that the function keys are full size.

For me, having the keys in straight columns is a must. The Ergomatic, Kinesis and SmartBoard all have this. It's amazing to me that the vast majority of keyboards, even split keyboards, have that ridiculous shift to the left as you go up the rows.

I like that on the Ergomatic keyboard the space between the two wells is used for a numeric keypad, page controls, etc.

LAYOUTS

There are two layouts on the Ergomatic: a QWERTY layout and the Maltron layout.

In principle I am a proponent of improved layouts, and while I think it is possible to do better than the Maltron layout it is obviously far superior to QWERTY in terms of ergonomics. However, it has one *enormous* drawback that was a deal-killer for me: the Maltron layout cannot be mapped to ordinary keyboards (because the E key is on a thumbad). That's OK if you never plan to use another keyboard again, but for whom is that true? And if you have to share a computer with somebody else, well...

So unless you are willing to switch entirely to the Maltron layout, you are going to have difficulty switching back and forth. If you use the QWERTY layout, you will unfortunately find that while the letters are where you expect them to be, very little else is. I understand that the Ergomatic folks now have another layout which is somewhat closer to the QWERTY standard for the other characters, but there are still significant differences.

I really wish the large key under the left thumb could be made SHIFT. I even tried software that allows you to remap the keys, but there were problems. If you could make that key the SHIFT key, then not only would that save you an uncomfortable deflection to press SHIFT, but you could free up a total of four keys on the keyboard: left shift, right shift, caps lock, and shift lock. As long as the SHIFT key is under your thumb, you can hold it down while typing anything you want, so who needs the locking keys? But no luck. Nor could SHIFT LOCK be changed -- it drove me nuts to have that SHIFT LOCK key where I expected the apostrophe and quote to be.

OTHER

The Ergomatic has a lot of advantages over the Kinesis for significantly less money. When they work some of the kinks out of it, the Ergomatic will be a much better value. Note, though, that some of the more expensive Kinesis models are programmable, while the Ergomatic is not; of course, you can use software to do some amount of reprogramming in the computer.