2025-05-29
Starting your journey toward ergonomic computingFirm recommendation: Invest in your computer ergonomics as soon as possible. Don't wait until something hurts.
The simplest major ergonomic improvement you can make is: If you use a keyboard that's extended to the right with a number pad and maybe navigation keys, learn to mouse left-handed.(Up to you whether you just relocate the mouse, or also remap the buttons to reverse their order. IMO remapping is very slightly more ergonomic, but it's small potatoes.)If your core machine is a laptop, get a stand, external keyboard, and external mouse, because good eye level is not good hand level and vice versa, and sustained trackpad use will jack up your wrists.(My laptop stand is made of a storage container, a 2-volume English-Ukrainian dictionary, and a coffee-table book of M. C. Escher prints. My keyboard and mouse are on a lap desk made of 3 thicknesses of foamcore board glued together, with a little foam border on the mouse end so it's less prone to fall off when I tilt it. This is all pretty primitive, but it makes a huge difference.)After that, invest in an ergonomic keyboard.Most important requirement: Split or angled so you can type with both wrists straight. If the angle is fixed, keeping straight wrists may require a specific distance from body to keyboard, or between armrests, or between shoulders, so you should test it out and see.Second: Thumb keys to take over from the pinky fingers on some or all of: backspace, shift, control, enter, and tab.Third: tilted so you can type with minimal twist of your forearm.Fourth: rows not staggered (each finger's keys in a straight column).
Fifth: Layers and configuration to provide some or all of the following: right-hand-only access to cut and paste (or at least copy and paste), punctuation marks for programming languages handy from home position, navigation keys handy from home position.After the keyboard, go for an ergonomic pointing device. If a mouse, it needs an angled top so that your forearm doesn't twist when you're using it.You might put more or less importance on it being cordless, having a scroll wheel, having specific buttons other than left/right, having configuration (scroll speed etc.) onboard vs in driver software on your computer.Some trackballs are symmetrical and can be worked with either hand, some are not. Almost all ergonomic mice are asymmetrical. Some folks love alternating which hand they use on a symmetrical pointer placed between halves of a split keyboard. I've never had the chance to try it but it sounds awesome.If your device is asymmetrical, the buttons on the left-hand version will almost certainly be reversed. If you didn't remap buttons before, you'll get used to the switch in a couple days.
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