Hashbrown777

Wow, whoops, thanks. It's a serious wonder how I hadn't ever seen these guys before. I looked into it a bit before going "well I guess I should get this". Kenesis' SmartSet is basically UHK's Agent. The Advantage series looks bulky as but the Freestyle is basically the same keyboard as the UHK but is so much cheaper.

All I came across where huge keyboards, or ones paneled of wood, or some bowl ones and ones where the keys were orthogonal (although I use dvorak and have a trackball, I wasn't ready to completely jump in the deep end and get one of those flight-control looking beasts). The 'programability' was usually in-software like with Logitech's LGS, but it seems if I found this in my search it's what I would've gone with.

Going forward I guess I can be satisfied by the more solid design of the UHK (7segment LED for layout display instead of some lights, a replaceable and much longer cable between the two halves, magnetic rejoining of the halves for transport, and the addition of modules whenever they finish designing those).

Looks like it's not as revolutionary as I thought, but I'm still pretty chuffed with how much of an improvement it seems to be in the evolution of these keyboards. I haven't got mine yet, but I doubt my opinion will sway as I'm yet to read a bad thing about them (that would affect me like 'where are my f-keys' or 'I hate staggered rows') for the people who have received theirs.

I ordered mine a couple years ago but honestly it'll be worth the wait. I don't care much for the mechanical keyboard, what I'm itching to finally use is the on-board remapping of keys.

At the moment I use dvorak and there are some applications that simply refuse to listen to the OS configurations. Especially remote desktop on windows and anything that isn't rdesktop on linux (which like to read direct keycodes an use the guest OS' configuration I guess?).

Having the keyboard handle this in-hardware means the computer can never make these mistakes, it'll just think it's a qwerty. Also in going to other people's desks at work, I can just carry this tiny KB with me instead of switching my brain over back to qwerty on their KBs.

On top of dvorak though, I though to myself "why only move the alpha keys in the name of ergonomics?", so I've also really mangled my non-alpha keys using .Xmodmap and autohotkey for my windows machines. https://i.imgur.com/4Q51VIL.png

As ridiculous as it looks this is an amazing setup. Having shift pressed by the thumbs is incredibly easy, especially contrasting it to using the pinkies. Moving backspace and other command keys to the centre was also a really liberating change, I never have do move my hands.

Like dvorak though, using software to implement this is problematic. Autohotkey/windows for instance likes to lock my shift key in occasionally when I use my moved alt key, requiring a logout :/ Having these issues dealt with via a hardware solution is going to be extremely satisfying.

That's the whole point of this keyboard though, the only thing it's missing is the physical keys. You want F-keys? Add it in as a modifier on the number-row. You do a lot of spreadsheeting? Make a layer with a numpad and maybe some macros and wasd->arrowkeys on the left to make life easy.

Its purpose is to give everyone what they need, but without needing them to have a bajillion different physical interfaces on their desk/s. You want F-keys, someone else wants a numpad, another wants Logitech's G-keys, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The UHK says enough. You can do it all on one set of buttons. It may not be your style, but saying it's lacking F-keys is disingenuous.