I was talking about this at work and realized I’ve become picky over the last couple years. I’m not looking for recommendations, just looking to share my experience and maybe help people. Feel free to share your ideas though.
Short version, the last couple years I was doing a master’s plus working full time. Together, I would be in front of a computer for over 12 hours a day pretty consistently. I could kind of get away with “good enough” mice and keyboards before then, but I started to get RSI and couldn’t play keyboard for more than like 10 minutes. I’d had that before and done little tweaks to help myself, but this was worse. So I decided that I had to get a good setup for the sake of my health as well as my ability to enjoy my music hobby.
Now, I use a logitech MX vertical mouse (I have 3, one at the office, one at home, and one at my girlfriend’s place for when I work or do music over there). I still sometimes use a logitech G-pro for music because it’s a bit easier to be more precise in some synth menus with that. But 95% of my mouse time is the vertical mice.
I also use the logitech wave ergonomic KB at home/office. I have tried a few others (and still have a cheaper old one my GF’s) but surprisingly the logitech is the most comfortable. That one might be muscle memory, just because I use it so much it feels the most natural. I get a lot more missed keystrokes on other KBs than this one though.
I have thought about going full split with the multiple layers of programmable keys and hotkeying my entire life, but that’s about the only improvement I see remaining for my interfacing with computers.
Curious if any of you are as picky as me and how you think about things like RSI. What kind of setups are you rocking?
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I don’t have any special setup, but I’m taking recommendations, cause it’s starting to take it’s toll. Soon i will be working from home 90% of the time so it’s important
Nothing special for me, standard keyboard with cherry browns and a boring logitech mouse. I tried a couple of fancy (and offensively expensive, what are these things made of?) split keyboards during covid and never got on with them.
Large ergonomics is the biggest thing for me - chair and monitor at the correct height, good posture, very relaxed hands and arms. Which is hard, because I sure love to slouch and throw my leg up over the arm of the chair some days lol. But sitting up straight like mommy always told me to sure helps with back and arm pain. Also, lots of breaks and stretching.
The biggest change I made was learning to relax my hands when I type, and to type very softly, barely tapping the keys (it also seemed to speed up my typing as a nice bonus). Basically everything from my elbows to fingertips as relaxed as I can make it and I don’t apply more force than necessary. After I trained myself to do that, any occasional pain seems to have gone away.
The only other thing I can think of is I balance my geeky chair time with more physical hobbies. It’s amazing how much “real world strength” you build up working a hand plane for an hour or rebuilding an engine. I think a lot of that non-repetitive but very taxing work offsets some of the RSI action, but I don’t have any actual proof of that.
On balance, I’m developing arthritis in both my wrists and knees, so I guess nobody gets a pass. Don’t get old, kids.
I just updated this to the Ergonomics Thread because I think that’s a better overall discussion. And indeed just focusing on computer input is selling the subject short - it can be your entire personality (if you’re me).
I did update chairs at the same time I did my desk, KB, and mouse a few years back. I had just started working from home and I knew I’d be spending a lot of time in that space. So one tip right off the bat is to dedicate some time/money/space to an ergonomic setup for anything you want to be comfortable using for more than a few minutes at a time.