What keyboard do you use?

Welcome on the dark side of the force.

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Did you got some generic key caps that happen to fit UHK or someone makes keycaps specifically for UHK

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They sell keycaps and other stuff in their web shop: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/product/uhk60keycaps

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Right, I am waiting for order delivery of the keyboard itself, with key caps I selected and was just curious. They say theyā€™ll deliver on Feb 15 but weā€™ll see. Quite excited about this keyboard.

Been using Kinesis Freestyle 2 recently, set up vertically and I am enjoying it a lot. I miss being able to program it, however, hence the order of UHK. Weā€™ll see, havenā€™t heard a bad thing about UHK so far so I am quite excited about it.

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Iā€™m quite sure youā€™ll like it. My tweet has a link to our unofficial UHK Discord server, you can pop there if you have any questions or things you want to discuss. :slight_smile:

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Good luck with that! The only true mechanical, wired and backlit keyboard for Macs I have been able to find is the CODE keyboard ā€“ the Mac designs, see the ā€œMaker designsā€ section. I am about to order this one.

I ended up going for an alternative design to a standard keyboard with the ErgoDox EZ Glow. Iā€™m expecting it to take me a few weeks to get completely used to it but hopefully I will and hopefully Iā€™ll find it more comfortable (one of the reasons I wanted to get a new keyboard and dug into this discussion was because Iā€™m starting to feel uncomfortable when I am using a smaller keyboard). The idea of getting used to blank keys and having symbols, the enter key, etc. in new places is slightly daunting but Iā€™ve now read so many good things about some of the alternative layout keyboards that I thought it had to be worth a go.

I like the customisations you can do on the keyboard youā€™ve picked and Iā€™d definitely be going for two colours! :grinning:

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I did not know how to do the proper 10 finger system before I got the UHK. My left hand was stealing work from the right hand and my hands were moving around and getting stressed. It took me two painful weeks of full time use and some typing practice runs to get to a state where I was not making typos all the time with the UHK. Related tweet.

After a month I was mostly back to my earlier typing speed. But I had learned the proper 10 finger typing on the way, because a split keyboard almost forces it. Now Iā€™m a much happier typist overall and donā€™t get the same kind of wrist aches as I used to.

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Do you know the reason that backlit keyboards are so hard to find?

Iā€™ve been managing without (Apple Magic) but have been thinking about treating myself for my birthday to a proper mechanical one. I was looking at the CODE for the reason that I would prefer a backlight having always had them on laptops, but as you say itā€™s one of the only ones around.

That said, I do like the idea of going for blank key caps and really push myself out my comfort zone.

This is what Iā€™m hoping for. I can touch type as long as Iā€™m not consciously trying to do it based on 25 or so years of writing code so learning to do it properly would be a great item to tick off my ā€˜must do one dayā€™ list.

When I was doing Windows development (which I stopped doing around 11 year ago) I used a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and loved it so Iā€™m (optimistically!) hoping that there is still a bit of muscle memory left from those split keyboard days but having vertically aligned keys will probably mean that Iā€™m starting again as a complete beginner.

Love the tweet! Although with the typos I usually make Iā€™m not sure that I need a new keyboard to mistype things.

Note that Ergodox is an ortholinear keyboard so it may take a bit more getting used to. But I have no experience of those so I canā€™t say how big of a difference it is.

EDIT: Oh you did touch upon that in your post, ignore this. :slight_smile:

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Ergodox is staggered keyboard, not ortholinear. It is columnar staggered keeb, but still staggered.

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Ah thanks, my mistake.

I honestly have no idea. My best shot at explaining it was that the Apple Magic Keyboard is Bluetooth and thus operating on battery ā€“ and keyboard lighting can drastically reduce battery life. But outside of that, itā€™s a puzzle to me as well.

Itā€™s always tempting to hand-wave this to some sort of a mythical ā€œApple cultureā€ or stuff. But Iā€™ve been in a lot of offices and co-working spaces and one of the top complaints always was ā€œeven if I dock my MacBook I still canā€™t find a good mechanical keyboard for it, damnitā€.

Itā€™s a huge market opportunity. The CODE keyboards will get my business. Itā€™s a double win really: I only ever heard good things about them, and they are the only viable choice for a Mac keyboard.

They are quite expensive but meh; this is a 2-year investment at the least. If not 5.

I found this link when I was researching keyboards as a result of this discussion topic. It might help others decide on what they want or need and it also helps clarify the various terms:

https://www.keychatter.com/2015/03/04/ergonomic-mechanical-keyboards-a-primer-and-roundup/

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How about up, down, left , right keys? I see this keyboard is missing them ā€¦

There are 4 layers in the keyboard: normal, mod, mouse, and fn. Arrow keys I have in the mod layer in place of ijkl (so I hold the mod key and press one of ijkl for arrow keys). But this is all customisable so everyone can make their own layout where the arrows are where they want.

Similarly F keys are in the number row in the mod layer, and mod-esc is the Ā¶Ā§Ā° key (very rarely used so I have esc there in the normal layer).

The mouse layer allows me to control the mouse with (among others) ijkl so I have stopped using a normal mouse entirely (the mouse mode is really good).

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Everyone? Or only those that like to pay for their operating system? Of my current keyboard I can only use a subset of functionality because Logitech doesnā€™t support Linux and third party tools only cover backlight adjustment, not the programmable keys.

Aside of thatā€¦ Without a backlight an UHK is probably not something Iā€™d buyā€¦ And even the backlit prototypes Iā€™ve seen so far have light shining through below the caps. After having used my G910 for about half a year now, I really like the precise backlight that only is at the top of the keys.

Many of these enthusiast boards have reprogrammable firmware, so the operating system doesnā€™t matter :slight_smile:

I respect that not having backlighting is a hard no for you, but the typical crowd for these is people who donā€™t look at their keyboards when they type. Sure, they might love RGB lighting to (arguably) make their boards cool, but not for any practical function.

I am really happy with my Logitech G600 Orion (on my Win10 PC, and btw I never paid a cent for the OS :stuck_out_tongue:). Really well-crafted, light, durable, and the backlight is very precise and non-intrusive indeed.