The Painfully Expensive Ergonomic Keyboard
During one of my frequent searches for great innovative ergonomic products, I came across the DataHand ergonomic keyboard. Innovative? I’ll give them that. Great? Not so much. I have not tried this product, but after seeing the demo video (below), I just had to write something about it. I got a kick out of watching the video, so check it out before reading on.
The Price Tag
Slap the word “ergonomic” on any product and you can expect to be charged a premium. People in pain are usually frustrated about their situation and are more willing to pay extra for anything that claims to resolve their problem.
So how much can you expect to pay for this bad boy? A whopping $995. The Mercedes-Benz of keyboards, it is not. Several hundred dollars worth of material and technology? Don’t think so. As I see it, there is no justification for this price. Its border lining unethical. Anyway, my point is that if a company truly wants to help people, their products should be humanly affordable.
Adaptability
I can imagine that the learning curve on this keyboard is ridiculously steep. I don’t think this is something your company would cover for you, because you’ll be completely unproductive for a month.
The DataChair
You must be kidding me.
Ergonomics
Let’s talk about the most important functionality of the keyboard; how it can relief you of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) or whatever typing-related injury you have.
It is true that repetition causes fatigue which leads to injury. This keyboard introduces a “variety” of repetitions. Instead of just pushing down on keys, you push and pull in all directions. In theory, variety is good, but it may not be the case here. With traditional keyboards, the weight of your hands help in the key pushing action. With the DataHand, your fingers are isolated and do all the work. To me, that seems more stressful on the fingers. Ergonomic advisors will generally tell you to use large muscles rather than small muscles, because larger muscles have much much more endurance. I don’t know how strong your ring and pinky fingers are, but mines are not built for individual labor. The DataHand may relieve problems in your wrists, but expect pain in your fingers and the back of your hand where the tendons run from back of the wrist to the fingers.
Conclusion
Maybe the video just doesn’t do the product justice. I admit, I was a little harsh on this product, but primary due to the insane price. Don’t get me wrong, I would love the opportunity to try it, but I don’t have a spare thousand dollars lying around. The company seems to be in bit of financial troubles, but I’m not surprised that the DataHand is not selling like hot cakes. If the keyboard is as good as they claimed to be, I’m sure there are companies lined up to take the patent. Remember, I have no hands on experience with this keyboard and my analysis (or rant) of the design is based on the video and their product information. To be fair, here’s a fellow programmer who has actually used the product and liked it: DataHand Review.
$995 is peanuts for those who can’t (comfortably) work on a regular keyboard any more. If you make $25 an hour it pays itself back after one week. A few years ago the DataHand Personal was available for $500, but that model is not available any more.
It took me about 3 days to get comfortable enough with the DataHand to be able to get work done (type at about 30 to 40 cpm). It took about 3 months to get to the same speed I typed with on a regular keyboard (70 cpm).
The keys on the DataHand are extremely soft. It will take your pinky much less labor to type on the DataHand than on a regular keyboard. Moving your pinky into 5 directions instead of only down does take some getting used to. And yes, you’re still making repetitive movements, so even a DataHand can give you RSI. So can speach recognition software (voice not trained to speak all day long).
The layout of the DataHand keys is only a problem for people who don’t have 10 fingers. They can’t use the DataHand at all.
I agree that $995 is a small price to pay, compared to the thousands potentially spent on doctor’s bill. But don’t you think that this keyboard could be produced for under $100? A lot more people would be able to benefit from what the DataHand has to offer, if it is sold for a reasonable price. Thanks for sharing your experience, by the way.
I have one and it is worth every dollar. I’m sorry, but you’re reviewing a product you have not used. Arrogance and ignorance. The only thing we can learn from your post is that you combine both qualities successfully. Really. You’re reviewing a product you haven’t used..
Wow, I didn’t think the post was that offensive to someone who owns the product. That is certainly not my intent.
First let me say that I believe in the value of this product enough to be a shareholder in the company, but I have also been a critic of the things the company has not done well enough. No one has given them more feedback than I have about the things that need to be worked on. For example, in 1996, I wrote a 28 page memo about the issues in the current model still needing attention. That was when it first came out . Afterword, some of the issues were addressed by the company. With the changes and improvements done then, the DataHand keyboard became a worthy professional data entry tool. Before that, it was valuable to the stress injured, but it was still not a solid productivity tool for alphanumeric entry. Some things still need improvement, like the mouse functionality and the USB interface, but these are relatively minor compared to the delivered value.
Second, I am one of the first three users (outside the company employees) to start using the DataHand keyboard about 18 years ago. I have been using it daily since then, and I have used all three models the company has produced. The current one I have been using for 13 years, and I feel I could lease this keyboard for $10,000 a year, and still make a huge profit on its use. That is partly because the limit of my workday on other keyboards has been about four hours. By the fourth hour, I have built up so much stress in my back and neck it is painful and even unproductive to continue. If I did continue, I feel I would be likely to get longer term stress injury. That happened to me in the past, and it took years to overcome it. On the DataHand keyboard, I can work for 18 hours if I need to, and I commonly do work 12, 14, and 16 hours a day. I am in the process of writing up a detailed report on my experience with the hope that it might help others. I am not yet sure how it will be made available. It discusses my remaining design issues as well as the benefits of DataHand use. In the meantime, only one publication, to my knowledge, has ever published a review of the DataHand keyboard written by a reviewer who has taken time to use the keyboard before writing the review. The publication is the online Mac publication ATPM, and the writer of the review was Paul Fatula. He missed some points, because he did not use the keyboard for a year before writing, but his review was far better than any of the others. Most people seem to feel no shame in writing from a vantage of ignorance—or worse. More shamefully, publications seem willing to publish such fatuous text. Bloggers are not the worst of it. They are just following a standard set by the so-called professionals.
Third, as for the price, the DataHand keyboard is a very elegant piece of engineering with almost 500 parts. It is not easy to cluster the switches around the tips of the fingers as they are, and the force curve on the keyswitches is a true marvel compared to the way all other keyboard switches are activated. In my opinion, no other keyboard comes close to accomplishing what the DataHand switch design has done.
Fourth, if I sound too favorable, consider that I used the DataHand keyboard for almost a decade, before I was willing to say anything. I wanted to take that long to fully understand the long-term impacts of DataHand use. Since then, I have answered questions when they have come up from people, but I am not an employee of the company and I have not derived any income from the company. I have done some things for the company where they have paid my expenses, such as presenting testimony before the Congress, and they have assisted me with an initiative of mine on ergonomic policy. This work is in the public record and it was dedicated to the public interest. My DataHand experience informed my knowledge of the issues, and I discussed that experience, but the policy proposal sought to enable people to get (from OSHA) solid information on ergonomic products of all kinds. My views were incorporated into policy, but then the Bush-Cheney administration did not fund ergonomic policy at the level needed. The nation and millions of workers have paid a very high price for this failure.