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It was finally starting to hit me, those dreaded pains in the wrist that
signal the beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome. For years, I thought I
would be immune to this bane of writers and programmers. After all, I have the almost unheard-of ability to bend my wrist such that I can touch all five
fingers to my wrist...flat! (Try it yourself if you think this ain't
odd.) I can also bend my index fingers back 'til they're flat against the
back of my hand. I can't say exactly why I thought that this would
save me from carpal tunnel syndrome...
But, after years of touch-typing on a flat keyboard which I knew full-well
was positioned too high (on a huge oak desk designed for big-bellied
executives), it began. After typing for an hour, my wrists would ache and
pop loudly when I bent them. I experienced shooting pains down the center
of the palms of my hands. The signs were clear.
So I dumped the desk on a friend, got a lower work surface, and ordered a
NuForm Ergonomic Keyboard from Adesso. Two weeks later, with only a brief
lull in the workload (due to an ultimately botched cross-country move), I'm
typing like a demon, taking few breaks, and feeling just fine. Indeed, the
pain left so quickly and completely that I didn't even notice the change
'til I decided to review this career-saving piece o' technology.
 For those unfamiliar with ergonomic keyboards, the concept is simple: the keyboard is split down the middle, separated between the "6" and the "7", the "t" and the "y," the "g" and the "h", and the "b" and the "n." Even the space bar is chopped in half so that it can be used by either thumb. Each half of the keyboard is skewed slightly outward, such that, when you put your hands on the keyboard, you needn't angle your wrists to get straight finger-play on all the keys. Why does the split help save your wrists? To understand, think of your wrists as bundles of garden hoses. To keep the hoses working at full capacity, it's best not to crimp them. Same goes with the nerves that pass through your wrists into your hands and fingers. For optimal long-term functionality during repetitive tasks (such as typing), you want your wrists (and the garden hoses...er...rather, nerves inside them) to be straight. Splitting the keyboard helps keep them straight. Of course, sloping each half of the keyboard slightly outward (i.e. raising the center of the keyboard) helps even more. Adesso offers a more expensive model, called the TruForm, which does just that. I couldn't buy it 'cause I'm too broke. I'm hoping that the NuForm model is sufficient to save my wrists (it's already saved me a few bucks). Both models are available with a GlidePoint touchpad, or a centrally-positioned pointer, or with neither. I chose the touchpad model and am guardedly pleased with it. I enjoy the tactile experience of the pad, but this model suffers from over-sensitivity, such that sometimes, when I simply want to move the cursor, the touchpad interprets my actions as a "click" (touching the pad sharply is the same as clicking on a mouse button). This can get maddening during cursor-intensive projects such as drawing or selecting text or objects. I'd personally rather the touchpad not have a "click" function, after all, there are two buttons right beside the pad. I'm all for the endless choices available in our products, but not at the expense of functionality. For those who do mouse/touchpad/pointer-intensive work, I would suggest adding a good trackball or mouse. With this in mind, they've fitted the back of the keyboard with not one, but two ports (one 6-pin mini DIN PS/2 connector and one 9-pin D-type on the Wintel model and two ADB ports on the Mac model). As a final note, self-taught touch-typers like myself might find the keyboard split initially disorienting. I, for example, always touched the "y" key with my left index finger before I bought this keyboard (and now I gotta use my right index). But the change took about two days to master. Now, I type faster and in longer stretches than ever before. With fifteen function keys, a built-in keypad, conveniently placed arrow keys, and the familiar bank of help/home/pageup/del/end/pagedown keys, this full-function tool is a great buy, and an even better investment in the future of your garden hoses. - Joe Nickell [9/9/97] |
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