Mechanical keyboard

Picture: Cooler Master

Everyday, I use a computer. A laptop at work or a PC at home. Being a lifehacker, I'm always looking for better solutions. For example, I like and use the Colemak keyboard layout.

Today, I'll present you my new piece of hardware: I bought a Cooler Master Quickfire XT mechanical keyboard.

For some time, I was looking for a better typing experience. Using my computers intensively, that would make sense. As a kid, I learned touch typing. I'm my parents still grateful for that! Unfortunately, I was taught QWERTY in stead of Colemak so I had to switch later.

First of all, I went looking for an ergonomic keyboard. There are many types of them: curved ones, split ones and ones with alternative key layouts. Altough the manufacturers and their resellers praised their products, I didn't find convincing evidence they were worth their money. I even found some articles stating the opposite. I'm glad for anybody who likes these devices but I won't buy one.

So I did some more research. After reading some articles about mechanical keyboards on Lifehacker.com, I became interested in this category. Like many others, I started computing with a mechanical IBM keyboard. Later on, I got used to to membrames which are most common nowadays.

Most inexpensive keyboards utilize a flexible membrane layer beneath it's buttons. Users have to press the keys entirely to type. Mechanical keyboards however, use a switch underneath every button. They provide tactile feedback and a clicking sound. They're also durable.

There are many types of switches available. Each of them with their own characteristics and purpose (gaming, fast typing, etc.). I choose Cherry MX Blue switches as these are recommended for typing.

After reading some reviews, I decided to buy a Cooler Master QuickFire XT. Why? Because it was the cheapest available. Mechanical keyboards are rather expensive. I'd liked to buy one with eighty something keys as I use with my laptop but the full size model was less expensive.

The Cooler Master is about two months on my desk now and I love it! The keyboard is rather heavy and looks solid. The kit comes with some additional keys and a little tool to remove keys. Directly, I removed the Windows keys and replaced them with CM logo keys. It worked directly on my Debian powered PC. The typing experience is good: I like the feedback of the keys.

Is such an expensive keyboard necessary? In my opinion not. Yes, it seems durable and yes, it provides comfort which is nice if you spent many hours using it. But for much less you may buy a decent, proper functioning keyboard as well.

Do you use a mechanical keyboard?

What I use

Some time ago, a few (former) editors of Lifehacker exposed the gear they use daily. You may read about the hardware, software and desk setups of Kevin Purdy, Jason Fitzpatrick, Adam Pash, Adam Dachis and Whitson Gordon. As a bonus, they also added some productivity tips. Altough some of their tools may be somewhat outdated nowadays, their choices, ideas and tips are still refreshing. Here's what I use.

Desktop

At home I use an ordinary, nameless PC of a few years old.

• Debian Stable with the XFCE desktop environment. Together this makes a stable and lighweight system.
• LyX, my favorite document processor (see my article).
• LibreOffice, mainly Calc en Writer (for reading incoming documents).
• IceDove: a rebranded version of Thunderbird for backing up e-mails.
• VLC Media Player
• Rhythmbox for organising music and downloading podcasts.
• Calibre for organising e-books.
• f.Lux for ergonomic purposes (see my review).
• Cooler Master Quickfire XT mechanical keyboard.

Laptop

At work, I use a laptop of my employer, Ordina. By the way, Ordina is an abbreviation of ordinateur, which is the French word for computer. In addition to the installed software, I use some portable applications. I carry 'my' laptop, along my other work-stuff, in a backpack of HP.

• Windows 7 + Security Essentials
• Office 2010, including Visio and Lync.
• PDF Creator for printing to PDF.
• LyX, my favorite document processor (see my article).
• FoxIt Reader: lightweight PDF Reader (in stead of Adobe Reader).
• FreeMind: mind mapping software.
• Executor: an excellent and lightweight application launcher (see my article).
• WorkRave: anti-RSI software  (see my review).
• f.Lux for ergonomic purposes (see my review).
• MW Snap to create screenshots.
• VLC Portable Media Player.

Netbook

Furthermore, I own a Acer Aspire A110 netbook. My software of choice for this machine is Puppy Linux. This is a very light weight operating system completely running in RAM. I use the netbook mostly for surfing the internet.

Browser and web apps

Both at home and at work, my browsers of choice are Iron and Firefox. The fox is heavily tweaked. Adblock Plus and HTTPS Everywhere are added to both browsers. At work I use Readability about which I wrote earlier. As mentioned elsewhere, I use bookmarklets, for instance to share articles or to translate them.

On the web I use GMail along with Rapportive, Feedly (since Google Reader stopped), Blogger and Diigo. And ofcourse, the social media mentioned on my profile.

Phone

Although my employer gave me a smartphone, I still like... the Nokia 6310i. It's reliable, easy to use, has a good battery life (even after years of intensive usage) and... enables me to call and to be called. Apart from work, it's the best choice for outdoor and sporting activities, like randonneuring.

What about you? Which gear do you use?

Readability

We read a lot on the internet nowadays. News sites, blogs, social media, etc. Are you distracted on many sites by blinking ads, news tickers, tweets and so on? I do. Therefore, I use Readability. According to its makers...

"READABILITY turns any web page into a clean view for reading now or later on your computer, smartphone, or tablet."

That's just what it does. And it does it prety well. Let's get an example. Here's an article on MakeUseOf.

And here's the same article, using Readability. Notice the difference?

Just text and pictures. Nothing else. Lines are also smaller which require less eye movements. I like it very much for deep reading. It's less suited for searching and scanning information.

It's also possible to save articles for later reading, sharing them on social media, e-mailing them and sending them to your e-reader. Readability is available for free as an add-on for popular browsers like Firefox/Iceweasel, Chrome/Chromium/Iron, a bookmarklet for any web browser, an app for Android and iOS and - last but not least - an webapp.

Happy reading!

Keyboard layouts

In my Cheaper by the dozen review, I wrote about the typing lessons in the Gilbreth household. I guess they used a QWERTY keyboard layout. It's the de facto standard. I know, there are exceptions like AZERTY in French speaking countries and QWERTZ among German oriented nations. Not to mention non-Latin script countries where other characters are needed. But why is QWERTY (still) so popular? Is it efficient? And what about preventing Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)?

Back in the early 1870's, Remington introduced their first typewriter developed by Christopher Sholes. It only printed capitals. During the evolvement of the machine, the keyboard evoluated. At first, the keys were alphabetically sorted on what's now called the home row, i.e the row of keys where the fingers are in rest. However, when typing speeds went up, they faced frequent typehead jams. The engineers tackled this problem by rearranging the keys in a way the most frequent used ones were placed apart. They experimented till less jams occured. Their solution was the QWE.TY layout. It's said that they finally changed it to QWERTY to enable their salesmen (...) to type TYPE WRITER from the top row.

Frank Mc.Gurrin invented touch typing. He won a typing contest in 1888 using a QWERTY keyboard. His opponent was a four finger typist who used a Caligraph 2, a machine equipped with separate keys for lower case and upper case letters. The match was covered in the newspapers which spread not only the news but also the opinion that QWERTY was most efficient.

The Scientific keyboard was introduced in 1893. The most common used letters in English were situated along the bottom row with the most common ones in the center. However, QWERTY continued to be the choice for businesses, those days the buyers of typewriters.

In 1932, dr. August Dvorak ("duh-VOR-ack") of the University of Washington and his brother-in-law aimed to enhance typings speeds. They developed the Dvorak simplified keyboard by moving around 31 keys. Studies showed significant improvements for typing English texts altough others questioned these results. In favour of Dvorak it needs to be said that recent studies confirmed the enhancements. However, Dvorak didn't become popular as businesses and typists were used to QWERTY. Furthermore, investments were low as many countries faced the Great Depression and World War II broke out.

The Dvorak simplified keyboard (picture: Wikipedia)

After the appearance of PC's and laptops on the desks at work and at home, a new interest in ergonomic keyboards arose. In 2000 Håkon Hallingstad introduced Arensito. It's suited for heavy use of special characters. Two year later, Peter Klausler created his keyboard. Michael Capewell invented Capewell in 2005 and designed optimized versions of QWERTY (C-QWERTY) and Dvorak (Capewell-Dvorak). In 2006 David Piepgrass showed the world Asset and Shai Coleman invented Colemak In 2010 O.J. Bucao introduced Workman and David Norman showed the world Norman. That's a whole bunch! Are they really better? And which one to choose? It depends. duhh

There's no best solution for everyone. Your choice depends on several factors. First of all: what's your purpose? Are you programming or writing? In which language? Secondly, how many time will you invest to learn a new keyboard layout? And last but not least: what's important to you? The distance covered? The number of 'hits' on the home row? Minimizing vertical or lateral movements?

If you're unsure, there are several applications available to measure your typing habits like Martin Krzywinski's carPalx and the Keyboard Layout Analyzer. The first mentioned, is also able to design your ultimate keyboard. carPalx and Norman published studies of the enhancements of the different keyboards according to QWERTY. Their results show amazing enhancements of total effort.

Source: carPalx and Norman

My keyboard of choice is Colemak along with a mechanical keyboard. First of all, it has the highest score. It's also relative easy to learn as its creator moved only 17 keys from the QWERTY layout, keeping  ZXCV in place. As an avid user of shortcuts, I often use these.  To learn Colemak, I enjoyed a good training in 9 days for free!

Colemak (picture: Wikipedia)

Back to our questions. Why is QWERTY still popular? Based on the studies cited above, it's not because of effiency. I guess, it's about standardization: 'everyone' uses it, so 'everyone' teaches it, 'everyone' buys it and so on. I presume there's also a correlation between typing efficiency and the risk of getting RSI. Therefore it could be interesting to investigate the differences between Workman, which aims to mininmize lateral finger movements, and the others whose focus is on minimizing vertical movements. I've still one question left. Did Dvorak suffer typehead jams? In neither of the articles and studies I read, it was mentioned. Do you know the answer?

Which keyboard layout do you use?

Enjoy!

Edit: One of our readers attended us on an informative article about RSI.

Workrave

Workrave is a program that assists in the prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). It alerts it's users to take a break frequently. Therefore it distinguishes micro-pauses and rest breaks. It also restricts the daily limit.

By default a 30 second micro-pause warning occurs after 3 minutes of using the keyboard and/or mouse. Workrave suggests a 10 minute rest break after 45 minutes of computer use. However, all preferences can be changed easily. Installing and configuration is simple as the menus are easy to understand.

Screenshot: Workrave

This software is a great aid to working healthy. However, when busy, it's very annoying to be confronted with the sheep. Therefore, I turn Workrave off sometimes. Workrave consumes on my (desktop) computer about 8 MB of RAM.

Workrave is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. It can be downloaded for free at the Workrave website. So, let's take a break. ;-) Do you use anti-RSI software?

Enjoy!

f.lux

F.lux is a tiny piece of software that adjusts the color of a computer display to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

After installing f.lux which is a piece of cake, you have enter your location. The software adjusts the color and brightness of the monitor according to these daylight settings and actual time.

Screenshot: f.lux

It took me little time to get used to the new display settings. It's less bright at night and a bit 'warmer'. Since I experienced it's less tiring for my eyes, I won't live without it. Nor at work, nor at home. F.lux consumes on my (desktop) computer about 5 MB of RAM.

F.lux is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. It can be downloaded for free at the f.lux website.

Enjoy!