Celebrating 10 Years!

profile picture

Split Keyboards

September 06, 2023 - Keyboards

If you do work on a computer for a living (which is a ton of us, even if we're not programmers). It could be fun to consider adopting an ergonomic/split keyboard. Traditional keyboards encourage a sideways angle of the wrist, and tension in the shoulders and full-size keyboards also encourage moving hands around to reach everything. These default keyboards also lead to contortions for key-combos, such as control-alt-delete on Windows and command-shift-3 on Macs. But, like many things in life, things don't have to be this way. Keyboards, for example can adopt whatever shape and size works for you, you don't need to work for it.

Microsoft Natural Keyboard

A gentler, easier step might be something like the Microsoft Natural Keyboard. The last time I was an employee, one of these helped save our lead developer who developed some pretty bad RSI while working at the company. They had such faith in the keyboard that they would happily and quickly buy one for you if you started to complain about any pain in your hands, wrists, or arms. You might find that this does the trick, wrists don't need to have an angle thanks to the keyboard effectively being split in half, each half adjusted to an angle people at Microsoft decided would be good. If this does the trick for you, you're all set. It's pretty easily available and doesn't require a ton of adjustment unless you don't touch-type.

Now, I'm not personally a fan of this option because I like mechanical keyboards, but conveniently these days there are a ton of options for something like Microsoft's keyboard, but with mechanical keys.