Re: special keyboard, ctrl below spacebar

[Malte Spiess]

Joe Fineman <joe_f@verizon.net> writes:

> Malte Spiess <i1tnews@arcor.de> writes:
>
>> "Florian Kaufmann" <sensorflo@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> Since I moved Ctrl to Caps Lock on my 'US windows' keyboard, I am
>>> wondering how I still could improve accessibility to modifier keys
>>> as ctrl, meta, shift (, hyper, super). I thought it would be great
>>> to have 2 of these left and right to the middle below the space
>>> bar. With the left pinkie and the two thumbs the modifiers would be
>>> reachable very easy, and while pressing any of these modifiers you
>>> still could reach easily almost any other key with the other
>>> fingers. A similar idea would also be to make the space bar much
>>> shorter, and place the two new keys at the side of the now shorter
>>> space bar. The new keys would be reachable more easily than alt is
>>> now beside the long space bar. Now I wonder if such keyboards
>>> already exist, or if somebody knows how I could alter an existing
>>> keyboard and make the two additional keys myself. I googled a bit,
>>> but didn't found anything. Any ideas?
>>
>> I use a Contoured keyboard by Kinesis:
>> http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/
>
> So do I.  It puts Ctrl & Alt handy to the thumbs, and they are next to
> each other, so you can even do Ctrl-Alt with one thumb.  The space key
> is no longer a bar, but is where the right thumb lives.
>
> However, it is absurdly expensive -- at a guess, because it is
> marketed as a remedy for carpal tunnel syndrome, so it gets paid for
> largely out of insurance.

Yeah, but if you suffer for years your're really happy for anything to
ease you pain. :-(

An alternative may be this one, looks alike, but it costs way more
(about 2-3 times as expansive):
http://www.maltron.com/maltron-kbd-etype-intro.html

Greetings

Malte