Plaidophile

One day I spilled a soda on one of them, and a few years later the other one wore out.

So I contacted the manufacturer of these keyboards, and they said that they couldn't sell them to me unless I bought them in lots of 100, as they only sell them wholesale, but they referred me to their American distributor. And I contacted their American distributor and they did not sell these particular keyboards but they were more than happy to sell me other models made by this manufacturer, of which all of them were gaudy, stupid-looking, and not in a small form-factor. And I was sad.

Over the next two years, my carpal tunnel syndrome reached the same state that it had been before, and I decided to find another manufacturer of small form-factor keyboards, and I found that they were all either extremely chintzy or extremely expensive. But then I discovered that Kinesis, manufacturers of fine ergonomic keyboards (which are unsuitable for my needs), also sold a small form-factor keyboard for use with laptops on the road, with the intent of providing a better typing experience than the built-in keyboard for a laptop. It was $40, but it was Kinesis, who are well-regarded for their high-end ultra-ergonomic keyboards, so I bought two, one for home, one for work.

One of them worked, though its keyboard action was bad, and the other did not work at all, so I sent it back to be replaced. And lo, they sent me a replacement, which did function when I plugged it in, but a number of the keys were quite unreliable, including the space bar, which is a rather important key.

When even Kinesis keyboards suck, you know there's something wrong with the industry. Why doesn't anyone make a non-sucky small form-factor keyboard anymore? JME/SunRace (the company which made the ones I bought in 2000) doesn't even make wired SFF keyboards anymore (they're all wireless) so I can't even use them at work, and all the SFF keyboards I can find have extremely stupid key layouts, are overpriced, and don't seem like they'd be particularly reliable.

Why aren't there more makers of SFF keyboards? Most people would be better off with one. The average computer user doesn't use the number pad very often, and when the do, that's what the numlock key is for. But in exchange for having the convenience of being able to enter their credit card numbers a bit faster if they happen to be skilled at 10-key entry, they need to have either their mouse or their keyboards at an awkward angle, which is the #1 cause for RSI which leads to carpal tunnel syndrome.

Even the "working" keyboard is still pretty shitty. It's a scissor-style action like on laptops (which is why I got it, because that's how the JME/SunRace keyboards were!) but it seems to have very loose manufacturing tolerances. sometimes a key needs to be pressed pretty hard if it's going to respond, making an extra snapping feeling/sound on the way down. If anything these are WORSE for my wrists.

Fucking Kinesis. I should just return them both and get a refund. But then I'll be back to the very-good-but-still-too-wide Apple Pro keyboard which came with my G5, and still stuck with my crap-ass Dell keyboard at work. At work they'll provide me an "ergonomic" keyboard (meaning an MS Natural 31337) which is even worse — they're even wider (more awkward reaching for the mouse, which now has even less space on the keyboard tray), the cursor keys are in a stupid little diamond cluster instead of an inverted-T, and they have a crappy built-in wrist-rest which gets in the way of the crappy built-in wrist-rest on my keyboard tray which pushes it back and kills my posture even MORE.

All these "solutions" are okay if they're in isolation but they combine with other things which try to solve it which makes things worse than what the original problem was to begin with.

Meanwhile I take typing breaks every few minutes, my wrists fucking hurt, my fingers are numb, and I feel like I'm at the mercy of a broken system which seems to want me to fail at everything, because CTS means that my brain is trapped in a body which can't do anything that I'm good at. When my wrists are acting up I can't even play DDR because the increased blood flow from exercise raises my blood pressure which then applies more pressure against the median nerve from the inside. So I can't even do things which have NOTHING TO DO WITH MY HANDS.

The only keyboard I can find which seems like a good idea is the small-form-factor version of the IBM Model M. However, it's PS/2-only (and doesn't work very well with most PS/2→USB adaptors), extremely loud (so I can't use it in my recording studio), and since it hasn't been made in about 10 years it goes for $125, if you can even find one, which is rare.

Ugh. No wonder I feel so goddamn hopeless these days.