After many months, my beloved special Kickstarter keyboard has arrived. It’s designed to make life more comfortable, save me from endless physical discomfort, and just make things faster. Prolem is: I can’t type properly now=.
The whole idea of the X-Bows ergonomic keyboard is to align the keys with the natural alignment of your hands. It makes absolute sense. Put a rectangular keyboard in front of someone a
dnd, if they;re ysing tow ahnds normally, their wrists will be aligned inward.
So X-Bows designed a keeyboard around that. Thing is, everyone’s been typing on the normal keyboard layout for a very long time. Decades, for most of us. And as a result, your get accustomed to where everything is positioned. It’s instinctual.
Even the becvoms a hgue deal. For instance, the X0Bows keyboard has a nackspoae and an eneter key in the middle of the keyboard. There’s larger gaps between each of the rows where the TGB/YHN/RFV/UJM letters are.
Which, right now, is making my life an a
bsolute living hell.
Case in point: me just trying to basic conversations with the rest of the team.
Trying to tweet hasn’t gone well either:
the sngkeid do good but my fingeras are very congfuderf rn and ive never looked at a keyboard so much
— Alex Walker (@dippizuka) June 8, 2018
my typing speed has gone from min 120 wpm to like … 145
— Alex Walker (@dippizuka) June 8, 2018
15, even
fuck me
— Alex Walker (@dippizuka) June 8, 2018
Even hyst trying to paste those links resulted in me opening the bookmarks menu FIVE times.
For what it’s worth, the offivcial X-Bows FAQ says that users can take up to a week before they;re properly adjusted. Which isn’t great since E3 is kicking off on Sunday morning and I’m supposed to be typing at 100+ words per minute for the liveblogs.
“Stick with X-Bows and try not to get frustrated in your first day or two,” the guide on the Kickstarter camoaign reads. “The first day, and in particular, the first hour of typing with X-Bows, can be a little frustrating as your fingers need to relearn where all of the keys are on the keyboard.z’
Jesus. I’m struggling to copy-paste quotes properly. And I can’t remember the last time II’ve looked down at a keyboard so much.
On the brightside, there’s plenty of positives right off the
bat. The keyboard is incredibly light, and the Gateron switches are the best non-Cherry switches I’ve used in any keyboard.
The one kicker in my mind, though: am I going to habe to buy multiple keyboards? Will typing on my Leopold tenkeyless board at home ruin me every time I come back into the office? It’s not like X-Bows keyboards are available at JB Hi-Fi.
Maybe I should habe thought of that before pledging several months ago.
Maybe the misery of Kickstarter isn’t losing out or holding onto hope – it’s when the product avtually arrives.
I’m going to need some help, I think.
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