[closed] Matias Ergo Pro Tour

[andrewjoy]

i just pulled a cap to take a look.

Whats with the grey slider ? They are dampend tactiles right ? As far as i understand it they have a white slider ?

Are they a different switch than the matias tactile switch in there normal boards?

Also i have found that the arrow up key is slightly different than the others , you can get past the tactile bump without actuating the switch none of the other keys appear do do this , you think its a dodgy switch ?

[scottc]

I'm pretty sure my damped tactile Matias switches have a grey slider too. I can't confirm though because I'm away from the office.

[Muirium]

They're regular tactile Matias. "Quiet click" as they confusingly call them. It'd help if Matias actually had some bloody pictures of them on the site! Instead it's just a clear prototype. Pfft.

http://matias.ca/switches/quiet/

Sounds like the up arrow switch is a bit flaky. How noticeable is it?

[andrewjoy]

You can notice it feels a little different, you can only notice the actuation after the bump if you are looking for it even if it does feel differnt as a switch

Its tactile bump is also much less, feels more like a black alps rather than a matias damped switch/cream alps.

It works just fine however.


More on switches ,

so there is "quiet click" that are not damped click switchs at all but more like alps black/cream tactiles and they have a rubber damper

and there is normal click that are basically alps white ?

But the click switch don't have the rubber dampers ?

[Muirium]

Three kinds:

http://matias.ca/switches/

All damped, besides the clickies.

[andrewjoy]

I need to buy some of each now , i want to see what a dampened clicky sounds like

[Touch_It]

Clicky switches are very loud, very Clicky, very tactile. Someday I would love to try dampened ones.

[andrewjoy]

I will be packing this up and booking the collection on friday when i get paid , it should be collected a day or so later

This has opened my mind to ergo keybords i will be keeping a lookout in the future

And i know they fixed it but there is a special place in hell reserved for the person who put num lock where it is in this version.

[sphinx]

Hey, from my calculations by the time the keyboard is on the way to me, i'll be out of home in vacations.. Is it possible for the people before me to keep (andrewjoy and chalks) untill the 7th or 8th of september? If anyone next to me in line minds waiting one or 2 weeks more for the keyboard to arrive i dont mind giving up my place in line.

[Muirium]

I'll swap you with Spikebolt. If you need more time, I assume shipping between Portugal and Spain is fairly cheap, right?

Also: DT's got a lot of Portuguese users. Fancy telling them about this tour? There should be more than two of you!

[sphinx]

I'll swap you with Spikebolt. If you need more time, I assume shipping between Portugal and Spain is fairly cheap, right?

Also: DT's got a lot of Portuguese users. Fancy telling them about this tour? There should be more than two of you!

i think that wont be enough since i'll be away for more then 3 weeks, starting this friday!

i posted on the portuguese forum to see if we could get more people on board this

[Muirium]

Good stuff. All we need is a couple more people on this in Portugal.

[chalks]

I will be packing this up and booking the collection on friday when i get paid , it should be collected a day or so later

Am I next then? If so I had better send you my address...

[pcaro]

I can recive it from Spikebolt or chalks and send it to Spinx in Portugal if you prefer it. Not problem for me. One week typing in muy goldtouch and I am ready for the Ergo Pro

I'll swap you with Spikebolt. If you need more time, I assume shipping between Portugal and Spain is fairly cheap, right?

Also: DT's got a lot of Portuguese users. Fancy telling them about this tour? There should be more than two of you!

i think that wont be enough since i'll be away for more then 3 weeks, starting this friday!

i posted on the portuguese forum to see if we could get more people on board this

[Muirium]

We'll just route around you, so things don't get held up. Remember to post again to tell us when you're back!

[yobinad]

I'm from Portugal
Spoke with Sphinx about my interest in trying the keyboard. He said to post here. I'm posting
If you want, send it to me then i handle it to Sphinx.

[Muirium]

Sounds good. I'll rearrange the list to add you and make Sphinx the last in Portugal. I know I can trust you because you're in the club.

[yobinad]

Ok that's great

Thanks

[cookie]

Hey Mu!

Is it possible to set me on the List? I'd like to check that little fella out

Cheers

[Muirium]

Sure. I'll add you to the German section of the tour. It'll be a while!

[cookie]

Thank you very much Mu!

Edit: I don't want to jump the queue but I saw that Seebart is on this list too, If you place me next to him he could handle me over the keyboard personally (that would save him shipping though)

I sold him a HHKB so I know he is in the same city as me.

[chalks]

The Ergo Pro has arrived with me. Thanks to Andrewjoy for putting it in a new box. Amazingly Parcelforce didn't put any dents in it. I haven't had a chance to try it yet as I've had to rush off to work.

[Muirium]

Good stuff. Use it for a couple of weeks if you like. I found the split ergo experience needs some adjusting to!


@Cookie: Sure, I'll put you right after Seebart. He got that black HHKB of yours then, eh?

[chalks]

I took it to work yesterday. Here are my first impressions.

It attracts a lot of attention. Of the 10 or so different people who came to speak to me at my desk yesterday, more than half asked me about it. I think it helps that it looks like something on which to get some work done rather than a gamer board.

The split layout does take some adjusting to. If I look at the keys then I can press them with the correct fingers. If I don't then just like other have said, I press Num Lock rather than b. So my head is now bobbing up and down like a nodding donkey.

I'm an ISO user who hits the enter key in the middle. In the past I've had trouble with ANSI boards because I would hit the gap between enter and backslash. Quite surprisingly this hasn't happened to me with the Ergo Pro.

Being able to map backspace to my left thumb is great. However while FN-backspace (top right key ) produces a forward delete, FN-left space still produces a backspace. I would say that this is a bug.

The switches feel fine. During the day, my office is noisy so nobody can hear me type. It was only in the evening, after most people had left that I noticed a metallic ping on the upstroke. It's quite a clear pleasant tone as opposed to the cheap sounding ch-click of the MX blue or MX green on my switch tester.

The wrist rests feel good too. Overall I'm quite enjoying it.

[andrewjoy]

I took the Num Lock cap off in the end as it was doing my bloody head in.

Did you get your asset tag stick it on something in work to confuse your IT department.

[chalks]

I see the tag says FACT. Is this the Federation Againsł Copyright Theft? After seeing the tag I'm a reformed character...

Sticking the tag on anything in my office will probably result in its destruction. A colleague once tried to move a 2nd hard drive from his old pc to his new one. The new machine didn't detect it and we needed the bios password to make the change. The help desk person asked my colleague where he got the 2nd hard drive from. He then said that as he couldn't verify that and as we could have planted something malicious on the drive he would have to take it away and destroy it. Had the drive not been removed from the original pc, the help desk guy would have moved it for us.... Fortunately there was not anything important on the destroyed drive.

[andrewjoy]

Foundation for Art and Creative Technology

Some IT department scan be silly , fortunately i am not restricted by silly rules , as its just me i can make the silly rules.

[Muirium]

No MX on Mondays!

Sounds like Chalks works in Hades. You have to interact with 10 people coming to your desk in a single day? I can't handle that!

Don't forget the Ergo Pro's undocumented DIP switches:



I didn't notice them. I'm not sure if left space = backspace would suit me, but I missed the chance to try it out.

[cookie]

holy sweetness, you can swap ctrl and caps? That is NICE!

[chalks]

I didn't have time to mention this earlier but the Ergo Pro turned up with almost perfect timing for me. Earlier this month I developed a hot sensation in the palm of my left hand between my little finger and wrist. It would come and go but seemed to worsen after typing. My left hand also felt weak and there was discomfort when doing things like opening a jam jar. A physio worked on some of the muscles in my back, shoulder and left arm to reduce the pressure on my radial nerve. This seemed to stop the hot sensation from reoccurring, although my hand is still a bit weak.

While my hand recovers, it's more comfortable to type on the Ergo Pro than on my Novatouch. I can rotate each side of the Ergo Pro to avoid ulnar deviation and I can tent it to reduce wrist pronation.

I also asked my employer for a workstation desk assessment. The report gives me justification to get them to buy me an ergonomic keyboard. However the internal catalogue of office supplies only shows the ancient rubber domed and far too wide Microsoft Ergonomic 4000. I suspect adding the Keyboard Co to the list of approved vendors so I can buy an Ergo Pro will be a bureaucratic process. It may well be easier to buy it myself.

But after my hand recovers the question is whether I need to stick to an ergonomic board or will I be ok to go back to a conventional one? Or to use an ergonomic one at work and bring my Novatouch back home. I type more a work than at home.

Now back to the Ergo Pro itself.

I've been using it with my Mac this weekend. It seems to clash with elgato eyetv hybrid which is a hardware TV tuner. When both are plugged into the usb ports on the back of my mac, the tuner reports a "Device could not be initialised" error and doesn't display anything. However if I plug the Ergo Pro into the usb hub on my monitor then they can both happily coexist.

As expected fn-backspace sends a forward delete. Using the dip switches I also mapped left space to backspace. However fn-left space still sends backspace rather than forward delete.

The amount and the tone of the noise from each key is a little inconsistent. For instance left shift sounds hollow in comparison to the right shift. It's not as uniform sounding as a silenced Novatouch.

I notice that both command keys and the option key have gone shiny as well as caps lock - presumably someone's been using that as control. This does give those keys a different, worse feel than the others.

On the other hand the large convex control key is great. The other day, I was control clicking some items in a long list. I looked down to see that I had my index, middle and ring fingers all on the control key.

Adapting to the Ergo Pro, does take time. After a week I'm only part of the way there. Fortunately I only occasionally hit Num Lock now. However I'm still hit the gaps in between the keys rather than the actual keys. (I've done it several times while typing this paragraph.) I'm guessing this is down to the split layout encouraging me to use all of my fingers. I had never learned to touch type, instead using which ever fingers felt appropriate.

Muirium, in your other reviews, you disassembled the board. Any reason why you didn't do it for the Ergo Pro?

Finally, I don't mind people coming to talk to me at my desk. It usually resolves matters better than via IM or a worse still email. And right now, the less typing I do, the better.