deskthority

Has anyone switched from ANSI to ISO and vice-versa?

If you did what was the main reason for it?
How long did it take to get used to the changes?
Have you switched back to the other layout in the meantime?

I have ANSI and ISO keyboards in frequent rotation. I even went from ISO to ANSI on my MacBook Pro. There's not much difference, but it is noticeable. ISO's huge RETURN encourages me to hit higher, up towards its centre, and sometimes after a few days strictly ISO, I'll reach for the gap between RETURN and \ on ANSI. This is especially true on Macs, where Apple's super skinny ISO RETURN feels like it really doesn't want hit on the spindly lower part.

The other keys are mostly unchanged, in the English layouts that I use. And you can control those in software anyway.

But I find the change between full size, tenkeyless and 60% is the bigger difference as I use my boards. I have a few of everything, and they're really quite distinct.

Anyway, this stuff is all individual. No promises my experiences apply elsewhere. But for what it's worth: variety can be fun. All things have their pros and cons.

I used to be picky... I strongly preferred ANSI or at least the layout with long left Shift and big-ass Enter, because my typing technique depended on my short pinkies at the time, but then I took an arrow in the knee switched to TypeMatrix and then ErgoDox.

Nowadays, I couldn't care less. I rotate several ISO thinkpad keyboards, an ANSI choc mini, Kinesis Advantage, ErgoDox and TypeMatrix almost without noticing.

If I had to choose one of those staggered physical layouts, I'd go with ISO and use a pseudo-split software layout like DreymaR's Colemak.

Most of my keyboards are ANSI, but the beam spring is (proto-)ISO, and the 122 F is ISO.

The left shift differences don't really bother me. The enter differences bother me a little, especially when going for a backslash, but it's not too bad. The Model F's ISO enter is poorly stabilized, so I find it likes to be hit low down, where ANSI and ISO enter share the actual buckling spring, so I don't really notice the difference that much.

I have used ISO boards basically all my life, mostly with a Swiss layout.

Recently however, I tried an ANSI board for an extended period of time, and decided to buy my new keyboard with one, as I find the standard US-Layout much better for programming (which I'll mostly be doing). With US-International I can have everything I need to type French, English and German, so I'll never have to switch between layouts for latin-based scripts. I'll also be using Russian and Chinese layouts, but those are based on ANSI too.

ANSI seems slightly more comfortable to me, you do have the advantage of having one extra key on ISO however... Question is whether you'll really need it.

I currently have my bolt modded 122 key Model M set up as ANSI with short left shift. No need to lose that extra key. ISO's least appealing feature (to me) that huge return key doesn't actually free up the extra key. The useful bit is entirely left shift.

I think my next keyboard will be an ANSI and after that I will compare which I prefer