Why didn't Ergonomic keyboards catch on?

[Cerb]

That Amia does look nice. I've been not gaming so much lately, because my chair is on its way out (it was a good trash score >10 yrs ago, clearing out an old office building, but it's had better days), but there's not much out there easy and cheap to get that'll be any better. I'm afraid an Aeron knockoff would be a cat scratch magnet, too.

 

[Throckmorton]

The bigger question is why the hell Microsoft designed a new style keyboard, but kept the keys staggered like a typewriter... They should have aligned them like Darwin did. Maybe then it would have been worthwhile enough to stick around.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Ugh don't like that Smartboard one. Definitely don't like the arrow pad, number pad layout.

 

[Imp]

I got rid of my Comfort Curve keyboard a while ago. I thought it'd be more comfortable than a regular, but years of use later, I realized that I was twisting my wrists even further.

It's hard to center yourself on a keyboard with the mouse having to be infront of you, and I'm not repositioning my entire body every time I switch between keyboard and mouse.

As for typing speed, what are you doing that requires non-stop typing? I've been an admin assistant and data entry clerk: I stop every so often because of how tedious the shit job is, so increased theoretical efficiency would probably balance out. And when I'm composing my own writing, I stop so often to think and rewrite passages that any increased efficiency would be lost. I won't even talk about how often I type with one hand -- did it for this post with one hand holding a bowl.

I went back to a regular keyboard and chose the smallest one to save desk space. Wub my cheap ass Logitech K120.

 

[Chapbass]

I use this both at work and at home: Kinesis Advantage

Absolutely love it, the keys feel great, I can type for a very long time without any sort of hand tiredness, and I can type faster on it than I can on normal keyboards (and yes, I use standard keyboards quite a bit at work). I also game on it without issue..though, if you look at my keybindings, they're all sorts of messed up... For example:

Up - e
down - d
left - s
right - f

not too bad so far, but:

Jump - Delete
Walk - backspace
crouch - control

This can sometimes cause some havoc because a few games dont like to use delete or backspace as a keybind, which is lame :\

Anyway, completely love the keyboard. Only thing I didn't love was the price, but it totally blows the crap that MS calls an ergonomic keyboard out of the water. My hands feel worse after using an MS ergo keyboard than they do when using a standard keyboard...