EDIT: no results on shopping sites, no results on Amazon … until someone told me to search for “keyboard 5000” or “keyboard 6000” – and suddenly appears this thing of awesome beauty: small, light, and Bluetooth!
I can’t find them. All I can find is a MONSTROUS thing from Microsoft that weighs a tonne. Nothing from the other manufacturers (!). And the MS one sadly is no use with a laptop :(.
A standard keyboard is very bad for your wrists. At the small end of the scale: discomfort, cramp, and bad posture. At the nasty end: RSI, long-term back/neck damage, tendonitis, etc.
So why is it that you can no longer buy the so called “natural” keyboards? They’re split down the centre, and/or curved, so that your wrists are at a normal angle that reduces strain and improves posture.
In Brighton, the shops I tried (from major high-street chains down to specialist independent computer shops) that sell 5-10 different keyboards each … claimed they had never even heard of / seen such a thing, and several salespeople suggested they’re a figment of my imagination! Yikes.
I’ve still got a couple of these keyboards, but I always bought PS2 ones, sometimes buying 2nd hand (when Microsoft stopped manufacturing them) so that I’d have an extra USB socket free.
Now I’ve got laptops with USB slots, but no PS2 … argh!
6 replies on “Natural Keyboards – don’t exist any more?”
I totally recommend GoldTouch keyboards: a bit chunky, but nowhere near as bad as the MS naturals.
They’re not cheap, but if you suffer from flexion RSI things, they are blimmin brilliant. Been using mine for years, couldnt be without it.
http://www.goldtouch.com/
They make PS2 to USB adapters.
@Jason
Good point :)
Again, I couldn’t find any retail stores willing to sell them (which is less surprising – I imagine demand for these is very small). Finding the adapters online was easy, but by then I was desperate to find a stock of “new” keyboards, because my old ones won’t last forever :).
Always referred to these as ergonomic keyboards in the past.
Incidentally, did the shop assistant refute the existence of trackballs and floppy disks measured in inches rather than gigs?
I’ve got one of these, really like it. I contacted the guy who designed it, and he recommended I remove the tilt plastic part, the reverse tilt is bad for people like me with wrist problems. It makes the keyboard much less imposing looking. The mouse is also fairly awesome, although I use a Bamboo pen pad most of the time.
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=095
@Chris
I tried all the names I could think of – including “ergonomic” – and I still just got blank stares.
It felt like I was in some kind of revisionist alternate history :)