About thirty years ago, I used a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard at home, and I loved it. The problem was that I was spending hours typing at home ergonomically, and then spending hours at work typing the ‘normal’ way on a conventional keyboard. All the other conventional keyboards felt wrong, and it was difficult to adapt on a daily basis. Eventually, the home keyboard died, and I replaced it with a conventional keyboard. I fondly remember the ergonomic keyboard, but not how it was breaking my typing skills.
Today, my work computer is a cheap corporate-grade laptop with no numeric keypad, missing modifier keys, and no TrackStick. Constantly switching between the keyboard to the annoying trackpad is like using a rowing machine all day long.
Here is my rant. Why do Web developers think is is OK to release Web apps/sites without keyboard shortcuts for common actions? If the Tab key does not get you there, it requires another annoying pointer move. To clarify, I am talking about the million-dollar grade ‘enterprise’ Web applications.
This was a very good read for me. I won’t be able to afford a mechanical keyboard, but I got a pretty good idea of what it can do from your experience.
For the record: I currently use a Ducky 10 keyless (cherry brown) that replaced worn out (key labels worn away) Filcos I’d been using for decades. I also played around with Azerons (two models), but I found gaining muscle memory on them difficult. My hands aren’t bad enough (yet) to need them.
Web searching sent me to your blog article a month ago (July 2025), and I almost bought the UHK given what you (and others) wrote about them. However; a Win 10 to Win 11 upgrade intervened, and I managed forget I was interested in a UHK.
Seeing your post here today reminded me I wanted to do this. Before I take the leap … Do you (or anyone else) use UHK arrow keys? I imagine the layers on the UHK60 would make arrows kinda clunky. While the UHK80 has arrow keys, it’s larger size and non-optional wrist rests put me off some. But I was leaning toward the 80 for arrow keys.
Oh! Another question … how do you like the track point? I notice you have a mouse next to the keyboard.
I have removed both of the modules – I do not use the 3-button module or the trackpoint module. I tried using them, but I gave up on both.
And, it’s amazing that my tiny blog often shows up in web searches! Sometimes when I want to learn about a thing, I search for it and I find my own blog posts. lol
I do use arrow keys on the UHK, and one of the mods I did was to switch the arrow keys to vi arrow keys – hjkl – so I don’t have to translate between vi and “not vi.” My arrow keys are mod+[hjkl], so it’s a natural fit.
I made a few other changes too, and I find that I like my current setup.
Both the mod and space bar are mod keys if held, and space if touched. Both of the “case buttons” are space bars, so I can still have a repeating space if I want one. The top left key does escape if touched, ~ if shifted, and backtick if held for 0.2 seconds. This was the best I could think of, for a missing escape key. As a Unix user, I had to have a ‘press to escape’ and I still wanted shift-~, and 0.2 seconds is pretty short to get the `.
Another thing I did was to move around some of the other keys – if I kept hitting a chord to do a thing, I made that chord do that thing.
At this point, I really don’t like using a regular keyboard. I’m pretty attached to my UHK60.
Great ideas for the arrow keys. I can imagine that working fine. I was skeptical of the trackpoint, but I’ll probably buy it (and the 3 button module) so they’re around if ever they seem like a good idea.
Thanks for mentioning Esc. That’s giving me pause. I use it a lot; way more often than arrow keys. I’ll have to think through your solution. Maybe bind ` to Esc and 0.2 seconds for `. Hmm. That might work.
I’m looking at the photo of your keyboard put together, and the only moved/replaced keys I see are CapsLock → Mouse and bottom row Alt and Super keys. Did I miss any?
Thanks also for mentioning chords. I need to pay more attention to the UHK’s programmability. I’ll still buy it, but I’ve some homework to do.
Semi off-topic, how’s Linux’s support for steelseries mice (or programmable mice in general)? I’ve bound Esc to a mouse button in windows, but I wonder whether that’s doable in Linux.
Honestly, with my escape/tilde/backtick “fix,” I think it works quite well. The only time it gets annoying is when i have a lot of backticking to do. works absolutely fine for escape and tilde and for the occasional backtick. I could also put the backtick on a layer, like mod, but this allows me to switch between the UHK and a regular keyboard for basically the same keystrokes.
At this point I am starting to find it difficult to use a regular keyboard, because i have gotten so used to the UHK.
