I've been thinking about it, the stress is on my right arm on the tendon shared by the middle and ring fingers. They get a lot more use due to the e and i being handled with those fingers, and by extension only one tendon. My wrist also does a lot of bending sideways because of the enter key (I've shifted to using caps for backspace pretty quickly, so it's less right bending than I'm used to).

yeah. I've decided to take a different approach. i talked it over with my dad who's a musician, so he has quite a bit of perspective on what causes the pain from piano and organ. the solution of every layout assumes the home row and 10 finger typing. the reason is that the strain comes from the small motions of the wrist rather than arm motions. his solution is ditch 10 finger typing and go for a floating around the keyboard approach - if i have to stretch a finger don't, just move my hand where it needs to go. muscle memory works fine so i don't need to stay on the home row to remember where the keys are without looking (eventually). it makes a lot of sense, I keep my fingers close together, using mostly the middle and index fingers. the pinky is short and the ring finger is much weaker than the rest so using them makes much less sense. (at least using them with the same frequency as the more dominant fingers). it solves a lot of the ergonomics issues and is probably the best solution for a laptop since no keyboard layout will make a laptop fully ergonomic with ten finger typing

I did that with qwerty, and it was very comfortable and fast. My advise, given that you seem to have dim RSI, is to go and get Pascarelli's book ASAP. Read it and rethink your ergonomics.

I type on a Microsoft Natural Kb. 4000 and it is excellent. The negative tilt really makes a difference.
If I had to work on a laptop I'd buy one more and hack out all the keys that come to the right of return.

Btw, I greatly improved my typing experience by putting return on the right alt and backspace on the left alt. It works great on this keyboard.

At what angle are you guys keeping your wrists?  Back in typing class they told us to keep our wrists at an angle that, to me, felt very uncomfortable--with the index fingers parallel to each other.  I decided to listen to my body and just learned to type with my wrists in their natural position, where the index fingers form a roughly 60 degree angle.  My fingers do "float" to some degree, especially when reaching for the Qwerty "B", "Y", and "T" keys.  However, I've noticed that I always keep an "anchor" on the home row--either an index or pinky finger, as appropriate.  I never had any discomfort, even when typing over 100 WPM on a standard keyboard.  So, it can be done!

Complete Guide to Repetitive Strain Injury: What You Need to Know About RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Cutting the keyboard levaing only the section with the alfanumic keys, main modifier, and F keys.

I love this setup, but I've got small hands. Bigger people may need to buy the real thing, the Kinesis Keyboard. :-)

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According to Pascarelli this angle can variate greatly. For most people the fixed-angle split keyboards will be fine, but there's people who will need bigger angle, and even those who will have their wrists straight on a regular non-splitted keyboard.

There's keyboards that let you adjust the angle of the split and of the whole keyboard (instead of fixed legs for positive or negative tilt. You'll probably want negative to keep your wrist straight.)

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I can only speak for myself. I get annoyed and wish I had my kb with me, but I don't feel any difficulty using straight wrist-breaker keyboards.

Thanks to the Natural 4000 now I always set my wrists straight even in the regular keyboards. I to that by touching different corners on each key, but this may not work for people with bigger hands.

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Edit: put the different replies in a single post.

Actually, it isn't all that difficult to switch between an ergonomic keyboard and a flat one. What you're more likely to find is that after using an ergonomic keyboard, you won't *want* to go back to a straight one.

I've found that I can even switch fairly effortlessly between Colemak on an ergonomic keyboard and qwerty on a flat one. I'd definitely recommend the Microsoft Natural 4000 to you, especially if you're having wrist trouble -- keeping your wrists straight is sooooooooooo much more comfortable.

I've been meaning to ask you about this one for a while. I can see that it'll make things easier for your left wrist, but does it help at all with the right one? I find it's my right wrist that tends to need the most TLC and with ten finger typing on a flat keyboard I still find the angle a bit awkward.

The right-hand wrist was always straight, as it has always followed the grain of the staggered board. I don't think my right wrist gets tired much. I'm actually a bit afraid of using a board like the TypeMatrix which has no angle on either hand. The Kinesis Contour has everything right I guess.

Thanks. That's going to take some time to get through.

As far as pain is concerned, rearranging the alphabet keys may be like rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic.   It's the reaching for the modifier and program punctuation keys that may need to be rethought.  Don Knuth has a couple of simple suggestions toward the bottom of http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html, i.e., swap parens and brackets; and plus and equals.  He's even supplied his Mac .keylayout files.

(It looks like he may have some experience writing lots of text, both prose and program. :-)

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a solution for the control key, which, even at the capslock position, and even if you move from emacs to vi, can still wreak havoc on the left pinky.

Hmm, don't know why the URL go so munged.  Anyway, I see you did get to the page.  (To others: Essentially google for Knuth's home page and click  "Downloadable Programs".)

Nah, I wouldn't read the .keylayout files either.  (Ouch, if you tried!)  They are meant to be simply plopped into one's ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts folder (which is what one would do with a Ukelele-generated .keylayout also, by the way).  Sorry, they are Mac-specific -- if memory serves, that's not one of your systems.  I can confirm that Knuth's .keylayout files do work on Mac OS X Leopard, even though they seem to have been made pre-Leopard.

There is a limit to the mischief that can be caused by rearranging alphabet keys suboptimally -- however you permute them, they are still under the strong fingers, or if they are under pinkies, there is no reach involved.  On the other hand (well, the same hand really), the modifier and punctuation keys will always reel me in, whether in QWERTY or Colemak.  That's part of the reason why I shifted to vi from emacs (and boy was that a struggle on par with learning a new keyboard layout!), enticed by the prospect of editing with mostly alphabet keys.  I'm afraid the reason I am paying attention to the modifier keys isn't because I'm so used to the alphabet keys that I don't notice them.  It's just good old-fashioned finger-tip pain.

I do think I subconsciously prefer programming languages that aren't punctuation-heavy, like Lisp, whose predominant punctuation is the parens, which are of course shifted keys on standard keyboards.  Lispers routinely swap () for [] -- though that has the disadvantage of pushing () way into right field.   But I will agree it doesn't make much of a diff.   I really don't mind the existing positions for (), even if they needs must be shifted, because I've learned to hit them with my right index and middle, lifting the whole hand of course, and it feels almost like heartily swinging away at a (real) carriage return, and certainly has the salutary effect of wringing out any built-up tension...  (Is there some history or statistics to show that people in the typewriter era didn't suffer as much as us zhlubs with computer keyboards -- and indeed may have gotten some wholesome exercise out of it?)

The real killer is still having to hit Control and Shift with the left pinky.  I am trying to shift (!) some of the burden to the Right Shift, but the load is still heavy.   I envy your strong left pinky.  Cherish it well.  You are fortunate to be so blessed in this our informatic age.

I've been looking at getting this keyboard also, perhaps in the Ergo Desktop 7000 pack with a mouse too. The second I tried it with the negative tilt by using the wedge thing, I was like wow, I love this keyboard!

My personal experience back in the day from using both types of keyboards was initially similar. I automatically wanted to type Colemak on any natural keyboard (we had two, only one was Colemak but I rarely used the other one) and I wanted to type Qwerty on any traditional keyboard. However, since switching to and from ergonomic keyboards, and to Apple keyboards, netbook keyboards, plus using Colemak on a normal Qwerty keyboard at work under autohotkey, I found that as my speed improved in both Qwerty and Colemak, it didn't matter half as much which layout I was in or which keyboard I was using. It was just a matter of trusting my fingers after awhile.

The unfortunate part for me was (and is) that even when I had a Multimedia Natural keyboard (almost as good as the 4000), I would still have pains in my fingers from typing in Qwerty, and only switching to Colemak seems to have fixed this so far. So on my ranking scale, I would say Colemak + Ergo KB comes first, then Colemak + normal KB, then QWERTY + ergo, and finally when I must, QWERTY plus non-ergo, normal KB. (Although I definitely won't like it, I promise.) Lastly, there's any sort of netbook keyboard. I really, really hate those squished things.

As far as I could see, the experiments were realistic and well-conducted enough... for the purpose of the study. But that study wasn't designed to select keyboard switch types on its own, as that would've required a much larger experiment basis. It gave some insight in the short-term effect of make force and overtravel, which is what it set out to do. In what way is that unrealistic and inconclusive?

I suppose that you, like me, would really like to see the much larger study that gives us all the practical advice in one fell, concusive swoop. Too bad, heh.  ;)  I think the main problem with those studies is that they can't easily measure long-term effects. What if a heavier keyboard with overtravel (like the IBM model M) feels heavy at once but is beneficial in the long run? Those model M aficionados on geekhack seem to imply that that's the case; myself, I'm not sure but I think I might like a somewhat lighter but still fully tactile board.