For someone who is on the keyboard all day long like me, a keyboard is one of the most important tools a programmer can invest in. The wrong keyboard can give its user finger, hand, arm, shoulder, and even neck problems, but the right keyboard is, well, bliss. Or so I hear.

For the last year, I've been using a Microsoft's ergonomic 4000. It's nice, but not perfect. My hands lay perfectly on the keyboard when I'm typing normally. I can't speak enough good things about the research Microsoft did on the angle of a person's arms on all 3 axes with this keyboard.

However, I fear they've made some wrong moves. The mouse simply lies too far from the center of the keyboard. This makes it awkward to do any serious mousing. Second, the keys are a bit tall. It takes a bit more effort to push the keys down that I'd like; something I notice after working on it for 12 straight hours.

Next up in line is the keyboard I'm using to type this, the Apple aluminum keyboard. It's nice. It has been doing some weird things like screw up text that I've written, but I suspect that could be fixed with a reset and new keyboard firmware. (Sidenode: This keyboard has firmware... that's just weird.) As far as typing goes, this keyboard gets it right in the travel department. The keys barely have to move to trigger an event on the wire, and that makes for relaxed fingers at the end of the day. However, it sadly does not make for relaxed arms. Being a "traditional" keyboard, it forces its user to contort their arms to painful extremes just to line the hands up with the keys correctly.

In the end, I'm not sure where to go, but I think I'll be trying to Microsoft Comfort Curve next. It appears to be a combination of the two that just might work for me.