It’s been 3 months or so now from when my journey into the split keyboards started and I blame my old cheap self and tech twitter who once again managed to “influence” me into buying things I probably should’ve acquired a long time ago.
I’m not exactly a coder that is writing non-stop for hours like some of you might be, but I do type a lot to communicate over Slack and also I’m probably the top person on my team doing documentation and updates on playbooks or notes, so over time I started to develop stiffness on my wrists after a good session at work. Always imagined it would take me couple more years to reach the stage of having physical pain at work (emotional pain is always there).So after watching streams, YouTube videos and countless posts on tech twitter about how split keyboards were the #1 thing people recommend you get if you want to make it into the world while also preventing a lot of pain down the road, it was my time to join the club.
So as a birthday excuse my wife insisted on buying something “nice”, so I pulled the trigger and ordered a ZSA Moonlander MK I. Which covers some of my requirements:
- It’s split duh!
- Customizable keycaps and switches
- Can be programmed to do a bunch of things
- Has RGB - yes I’m pathetic like that!
- Extras can be either printed or bought directly from the vendor
- Looks awesome, it just does.
Not going to lie the first days I couldn’t even type more than 4-7 words per minute because everything was confusing. I had to keep looking at the keys, so I could narrow down which keys to hit. Also, idiot me decided to buy the version with blank keycaps so my pain and frustration levels went through the roof, thankfully I had some spare keycaps from my Razer Gaming Keyboards and those worked while I settled into things.
Another big time consumer item I wasn’t truly expecting was finding or setting up the keys into locations I could easily find, remember and benefit from. Spent couple hours just flashing over and over the board cause realized I either couldn’t find a key or it was on a location that made no sense to me. Eventually I found my silver bullet configuration which you can see here.
Overall it took me 1.5 months to get back into my average words per minute (90-105) with minimal errors. Also, those long documentation or blog writing sessions no longer cause problems.
Finally, my setup just looks awesome with the split keyboard. I’m really happy with my purchase.
TLDR - Yes the keyboards are expensive but, they are awesome, fun and help you a ton in the long run.
Until the next one! Adios 👋