PC hardware - keyboards

October 22, 2021

PC hardware - keyboards

Some general comments

I like ergonomic keyboards. I spent years (perhaps 10) typing on a Microsoft "Natural keyboard elite", which is overall a decent but mediocre 104 key keyboard. The big advantage is that it places the keys for the left and right hands at an angle, allowing a more comfortable hand position. This is now know as an "Alice" layout.

After being exposed to mechanical keyboards with some flavor of Cherry switch, I was eager to get my hands on such a keyboard which had the sides angled to allow more natural hand positions, but was not able to find any such thing (in 2021). Now (in 2026) there are a lot of options.

I am now using a Keychron Q8 which is an Alice layout keyboard with Gateron mechanical switches. I am very happy with it. I have the Gateron blue switches.

Before I became aware of Keychron (perhaps even before they were on the market), I bought an Ergodox EZ, which goes even further and breaks the keyboard into right and left halves joined by a cable.

You can read much more in the links below, but here are two observations up front.

The Ergodox EZ has a really big learning curve.
I never use a numeric keypad and a smaller 87 key keyboard will serve me just fine.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org