Now I have an Advantage 3 with Box White switches, after admittedly talking to an Upgrade Keyboards key switch sommelier, which I admit somewhat undercuts my first sentence in this comment.
I switched to advantages more than 20 years ago, but i still keep building new mechanicals, a couple for me (playing games on an advantage is ... hilarious), some for friends. But I hear this. I went to a 360pro with browns (because I ordered it direct before the upgrade keyboards stuff went live). Maybe I'll swap them out some day (one of the used advantage 2s I picked up a few years back was the RedLF model and I thought I'd hate it, but for 50$ who can refuse, but I found myself preferring it over the brown model).
The 3 is basically the same except you have real F keys and can upload settings to it via USB. Both are great keyboards. I’ve used them for well over a decade.
I went from 1's and 2's w/ custom controllers to a 360pro. It's largely the same board in terms of geometry. There are a few more keys, which are welcome, it's ZMK programmable (pro only). The writ wrests, extra, are better and don't seem to deform/wear out like the old ones. It's much less 'hollow', feels much more solid. The tenting is pretty awesome, the split is welcome. I would buy the pbt keys for extra $, the keys they ship are shit. I also pulled the DSA homerow from one of my advantages and used it here, they moved away from those special home row caps for cost reasons.
I recently purchased an Alice format ergonomic keyboard, the keychron k15 pro [1]. It has a split design, but otherwise it’s totally flat. How much of an improvement do you think a more ergonomically shaped keyboard l8ke a kinesis makes?
I have been using the Freestyle Pro for the last 4 years now and it has ended me thinking about keyboards. I was really looking forward to the new super fancy one, but that felt too expensive when I already have one I am happy with it. ~600 Euros in DE when I remember correctly.
Same here. I've been a Kinesis fan since 2012 and went through several Freestyles, and for the last 5 years or so I've rocked the Edge (basically a Pro with rgb lights and mech switches). I was really looking forward to the Advantage360 but the UK price is mental: £590 for the cordless version. Yes, it's a great keyboard that will likely last a decade, but I'm not convinced the gains are big enough to justify the cost.
Someone owning only one car, and it being a $100k+ Mercedes, probably means they aren’t into cars as a hobby. They found a great vehicle they like and can afford, they enjoy driving it regularly, and it meets all of their needs. There is nothing wrong with that, and, in fact, it sounds awesome.
However, someone who has 5-6 sub-$10k cars in their garage is almost definitely very into cars. It is about tinkering with them, racing them, restoring, building project cars, doing car shows, collecting them, etc. Doesn’t have to be all of those at all, just any single one (including those I haven’t explicitly mentioned there) would be more than enough.
The pricing doesn’t have much to do with someone being into a hobby. My personal guess is that it is more about how much time you actively dedicate to it.
They are, but up until the new split version came out I used the same keyboard since ~2001. I picked up a couple more for sub 100$ when i saw them on craigslist/offerup. One for home, one for the office, a spare, and one to lend out.
Like others I credit my first kinesis with saving my career. I was starting to get RSI issues, doctor put me in braces and I showed him the kinesis site to see what he thought about their claims, if any of his other patients had tried. He thought it passed the smell test, I bought one the next day and drove out to the HQ (they are near seattle) and picked it up.
It takes a bit to get used to it, especially if you aren't a strong touch typist. The columner layout is weird at first, the wells are weird at first, the thumb clusters are weird at first. Within a month I was back up to speed and was able to shed my bracers soon after.
>Aren't those like $500 a pop? Handing out that kind of dough for a keyboard sounds like the opposite of stopping being much into keyboards.
A keyboard can last 20+ years, while a computer around 5 years before it becomes obsolete, more or less. People buy other keyboards because it’s missing something. The kinesis while not perfect is the best keyboard you can buy without building your own from scratch. Nothing comes close, except datahand, but they don’t make those anymore. I stopped buying keyboards after the kinesis.
I'd almost surely have lost my career in software if it weren't for some solution (the solution of which for me was a Kinesis Advantage). I used the PS2 version for a decade, then bought a USB version, which I've used for at least 20 years at this point. I bought both used, but if I'd paid 2x the new price, it would still have been well worth it.
Now I have an Advantage 3 with Box White switches, after admittedly talking to an Upgrade Keyboards key switch sommelier, which I admit somewhat undercuts my first sentence in this comment.