I just moved to a new Microsoft Sculpt keyboard. I am more than happy with it. I wanted to move to a split keyboard for a long time but I never had the guts to try. Indeed I wanted to move to a Model 01 but this makes a good intermediate step.
This is the first Microsoft product that I buy that feels really beautiful. It is really nice to have it in your table.
The position of the hands is really comfortable although a bit odd because it makes your wrists to stay horizontal. It feels strange in the beginning but the position is super relaxed.
There is a small detail I also love and it is that the spacebar is broken into two. Probably this is a really small detail but if I press it with a thumb the other thumb is not affected.
The keyboard is not bluetooth but comes with a small USB 2.4Ghz adapter which may not be ideal but is nice enough.
I don’t like noisy keycaps and in this laptop they are really silent. The pulsation is a bit mushy but if you come from a Apple keyboard like me this will feel super fine.
I was able to customize it to my taste using Karabiner which is an awesome tool for OsX. Also it allowed me to do some small hacks.
Remap CapsLock to control
Of course I do this to every new computer I get. This saves a lot of pinky emacs pain.
Switch between Alt and Command
In the sculpt keyboard these two keys are reversed in relation to where they are in a regular mac keyboard.
Use CTRL+IJKL for cursor
This is really awesome. I’m really enjoying this. Now I no longer have to move my hands to the arrow keys for moving the cursor. I find this also saner than Vim’s hjkl. I did this because in my opinion the cursor keys in the sculpt are really uncomfortable to reach and now I did this change also in my laptop’s integrated keyboard.
In conclusion, I’m super happy with my acquisition. This is a really nice addon to my setup. I’m looking forward to get really used to it and next year I will aim for a Model 01.