- The Good: Ergonomic design; special zoom key; lots of media controls and programmable function keys.
- The Bad: Split keyboard is only practical for touch-typists; keyboard will definitely feel odd at first, even for experienced typists.
- The Verdict: A radical approach to making keyboards more comfortable.
REVIEW:
I do a heck of a lot of typing in my line of work, and avoiding repetitive strain injury is high on my list of things that are essential to job security. As a result, I have a particularly keen interest in ergonomic keyboards — I've tried a lot of them over the years, some great, some good, some really bad. Microsoft's new Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is one of the oddest designs to land on my desktop, but it has quickly become one of my favourites.
Carpal tunnel syndrome and other strain-related injuries to the wrist and hand usually happen simply because of the position of your hands when typing, not the amount of force you're using or how fast you type. If you take your hands and relax them on the table in front of you, the palms don't sit flat — they usually fall naturally into a position where the pinky's knuckle is on the table, but the index finger knuckle is raised an inch or so into the air. The tips of the fingers of your two hands will also look a bit like a V - with the index finger at the bottom of one side of that V and the pinkie at the top. Meanwhile, when at rest on a flat surface your wrists tend to end up so that if you put a ruler on top of your forearm, it would sit pretty much flat - going straight along from your elbow to your knuckles.
In contrast, traditional keyboards put your hands and wrists into a totally different configuration. First, they force you to pull your wrists together and turn your hands inwards and upwards, so that your fingers form a parallel line on the keys instead of that more natural V-shape. Second, your palms are forced flatter against the keyboard. And the raised back of the keyboard forces you to bend your hand upwards at the wrist, in many cases putting strain on the nerves and ligaments.
The Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 ($84.95 Cdn. suggested retail price) takes an interesting approach to try and get your hands back to a more relaxed position while typing.
First, the wired USB keyboard has the normal pop-up legs to raise the top edge of the keyboard. But you can close them and clip on a supporting band of plastic under the front edge of the keyboard to raise it several inches instead. This makes the keyboard slope down away from you at about seven degrees, the complete reverse of the traditional keyboard setup, letting your wrists level out instead of bending upwards.
Second, the keyboard layout is split. There's a group of keys for the right hand, and another for the left. The split groups are angled so that the bottom rows of each group (starting with B and N on either side) are twice as far apart as the top row of keys in each group (the row starting with the T and Y keys on either side). This is a nightmare for hunt-and-peck typists — the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is really only practical for touch typists. But this formation allows your hands to get back closer to that natural V formation.
Third, the keyboard looks like a wave is running through it — something Microsoft calls a "Gull Wing" design. The centre of the keyboard is high, sloping downwards on each side at about 14 degrees. So the right-hand group of keys, for example, the Y, H and N keys are up quite high, and the Enter, Shift and Control keys are down low at the bottom of the slope.
The keyboard also has a wide, leather-like padded wrist rest. It gives great support even though the front of the keyboard is raised several inches off the desktop.
All in all it sounds pretty awkward and it looks pretty outlandish, but it's surprisingly comfortable. The key layout is standard QWERTY and the number pad is exactly where you'd expect it to be. I wouldn't suggest it for novice typists or video gaming, but as a touch typist I got used to the arrangement and stopped thinking about it within about 15 to 20 minutes. It was comfortable, and took a noticeable amount of strain off my wrists and hands.
The Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 isn't just about ergonomics, though.
First, between the split keys is a rocker-switch. The keyboard drivers allow it to control a zoom function for looking at text and photos, or you can program it for scrolling or activating programs if you wish.
Below the space bar are two buttons that default to forward/back in a Web browser or for moving between Windows programs, but again you can reprogram them to do whatever you like.
Along the top of the keyboard are media playback and volume controls, as well as six programmable shortcut keys. There are also quick-launch buttons for your Web home page, favourite search engine and e-mail program, and the Windows calculator.
All the Control keys are labelled for quick reference — for example, C says "copy," the front of the V key says "paste," and so on. The F keys also double as quick-launchers for common commands, such as undo, redo, cut, paste and print.
Ergonomics are a very personal thing, and if you have serious hand and wrist problems when typing you need to see a specialist for advice and sometimes therapy or corrective surgery — changing hardware isn't always the answer. But if you want to try an alternative to squared-off traditional keyboards, the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is worth checking out.
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