Of Keyboards...

2 years since my last article. Wow ! Long long time !

As lots of us, I’m using a computer for extended periods of time.

And for this task, like everybody, I use a mouse and a keyboard. This is quite striking that most of us use a default keyboard. For French people, that means a membran or chicklet AZERTY 106 touch keyboard. This is quite unfortunate, as we stupidly use sub-optimal technologies.

For a long period of time, more than 10 years, I used a keytronic ergoforce keyboard at home. It was membran/rubber dome based, but very tactile. Really loved it. At work, was just using default keyboard with much less enthousiasm.

Also striking to me is that I use a computer since I’m 12, and almost all my days (and night) since I’m 18. Yup, more than 30 years ago, and never ever learn to type properly on a keyboard.

Circa 2009, I began to (ligtly) experience wrist pain. After thinking a little about this, I decided to take the plunge and try to improve typing comfort and speed by coverting my beloved keytronic at home to bépo (french dvorak equivalent), putting stickers on it. This was a big mistake. I largely under estimated the task, and cowardly gave up after two weeks or so… But stickers remained on the keytronic with the secret hope that one day, I’ll really go for it. Of course, this never happened. And this good keyboard collected dust for years, while using an inferior keyboard instead. End of story. Sort of…

This inferior keyboard eventually broke down in november this year, giving me another chance to try bépo layout. And this time, I tried to insist a little, doing exercises (with klavaro) and also learning to blindly type with all fingers.

This is a really frustrating experience. Really. I never was a very fast nor precise typer. On Azerty, I usually barely surpass 55 Word Per Minutes which is not stellar, and sometimes go under 50, due to excessive errors.

But first tries in bepo mode were so low I couldn’t bare it more than a few minutes, it’s like mental torture ; see the numbers reported by klavaro, after some days of training. That was the first full test I had enough courage to finish :

8 words per minutes. Really frustating. that was in november 2017, the 6.

Since, progression is steady but slow.

So, here are the numbers :

I promise to keep posting my progression numbers here, but it’s slow…​ I must confess that for my work, I still use azerty, which is probably limiting progress, and at home, when in hurry, i’m not going bépo systematically… Even today I’m not fast enough to prevent me to switch. I’ll probably go for it when I’ll be able to surpass 35 MPM, which is a long way to go.

Interesting note : blindly typing on a keyboard gives you much more feedback on the quality of it ; Rubber domes seems much more crappy; Keytronic is much more better, but who can even beat the feeling of a mechanical keyboard…​

Proudly (and slowly) totally entered on a mechanical (outemu blue switches) bépo keyboard. [Next article will probably be about mechanical keyboards…​]