So some months back, I backed this mechanical keyboard, the Keychron K2 on Kickstarter – I’d been on the hunt at the time for a wireless keyboard that really, I wanted to use with all my personal devices. A keyboard to ‘rule them all’ for all the areas of computing I have in my life.

I had three main areas that I wanted to use the keyboard on:

• My desktop PC
• My work PC
• My PS4 at home

Aside from that, I wanted it to also be wireless, and not have me tethered to a machine – I wanted to be able to pick it up, slip it into my backpack, and carry it between the office and home. Bluetooth connectivity was a must in case I decided to use it with a number of other devices I had laying around. The Keyboard arrived on Wednesday last week – and I’ve been using it as much as I can over the last 5 days.

So far, I’ve been thrilled with the keyboard – its touch feel, the key action – the sound, and the size of it make it a very satisfying package to use as my daily driver keyboard.

Only complaint I’ve had so far:

• I hate the placement of the Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys -they could be better arranged on the right-hand side of the keyboard. I feel that the order (from top to bottom) would be better off as Home, Page Up, Page Down, End

You can see the layout complaint I have below in the diagram of the keyboard’s layout:

Aside from that – the lighting is great, keys are easily removable and the keyboard is super maintainable! I’m a huge fan of this keyboard, and can’t stop gushing about its usability and space-saving TKL 87 key design. I barely miss the numpad (although it now means I need to rethink how I bind my keys for MMO playing!)

All-in-all though, this keyboard scores a very high 8.5/10 for me, and has taken its place in my inventory as my daily driver keyboard; for all my regular code bashing and computing.

See and Download my Current Layout Here

Back at the start of the year, I picked up an Ergodox EZ keyboard; in an effort to save my wrists from the terrors of RSI. The keyboard, is actually quite alien compared to most standard keyboards, with something of a split QWERTY layout, it still bugs a lot of people when they see the keyboard.

Needless to say, it’s taken me quite some time, in fact, I still am adapting to using this keyboard. It doesn’t help even more that I’m using a regular shaped keyboard at work everyday, either.

I still make a lot of typo errors, and I’ll stumble every now and then based on games asking me to press certain non-alphanumeric keys (Ctrl, Shift, etc.) and I sorely miss the arrow keys being in that familiar up/down/left/right shape on a regular keyboard. Instead, it’s an almost Vi-esque left/right/up/down setup. Still, I’ve persisted, and my typing speed almost matches the original keyboard layout speeds I had.

Where I really started to fall in love with the ErgoDox EZ though, is the eventually gentle tweaking I’ve been doing over time to the default key layout that the keyboard shipped with. It’s really become my own keyboard, and it’s been a journey that I’ve found myself looking at other lovely keyboards and told myself “No, I’m going to tough it out with the ErgoDox, because it’s unique, it’s mine.”

Without further ado though, here’s the layout – it’s split over two layers, with a toggle button in the bottom right to switch between layers. I can add a couple more layers on top (0 – 3 layers), but I’m trying to keep it to a minimum.

LAYER 0

LAYER 1

And as per the link at the top of this post, you can see and download my Layout Here. It’s dubbed version 3.4 — if you search the layouts on the configuration site for “jaytwitch” it’ll interestingly bring up a few of my historical layouts too 🙂