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Keyboard Set
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There is no doubt that you have heard all of the buzz around office ergonomics. But do you know how home office ergonomics can apply to you? Well, if you are your own boss, you are in charge of your office furniture and setup and you can control the ergonomics of your office, and ultimately your own health. A few simple adjustments in what you already own could save you a lot of pain and ultimately a lot of money in lost work and health bills.
So what do you need to consider when you are looking at home office ergonomics? The most obvious thing and one of the simplest items is your chair. You sit in this chair for most of the day, every day so it should be comfortable. Not only comfortable but ergonomically correct. Your office chair should first and foremost be comfortable for you to sit in. You should have lumbar support from your chair to protect your lower back. And you should be able to sit with your feet solidly placed on the floor.
Another culprit for office aches and pains is your keyboard. Do you type a lot, or work on your keyboard? If you do, you may have noticed aches in your wrists or fore arms. Take a look at where your keyboard is. Your keyboard should not be sitting on your desk; in fact, it should be lower than your desk on a keyboard tray. This is a very easy thing to fix; in fact you can easily install a keyboard tray on the underside of your desk. By having your keyboard at a lower level you will reduce the strain on your wrists and save yourself from a lot of pain.
Be sure to position your computer monitor at the proper height as well. The top of the monitor should be at eye level or slightly below. You should not have to look up and strain your neck when you are looking at your computer screen. Keep your monitor clean, because even dust particles that gather on the screen will affect how you see the screen and can strain your eyes.
If you use a computer mouse a lot, you should invest in an ergonomically correct mouse that minimizes the strain on your wrist. A traditional mouse demands that the wrist be held at an unnatural angle with a twist.
If you use a laptop computer consider investing in a separate keyboard and mouse that you can set up properly. A laptop keyboard will cause a lot of unnecessary strain on your arms and wrists because of the condensed set up of the keys and by attaching a separate keyboard you will be able to prevent a lot of damage.
Home office ergonomics are easier to accommodate because you are in control of your own environment now someone else. You can choose the proper equipment to benefit your health and maximize your productivity.
This article was provided courtesy of HomeOfficeBuddy.com where you can learn lots more about ergonomics in the office and other home office related topics.
Hardware: Keyboards
Ask a roomful of computer users to make a list of the sexiest peripherals, and you can be pretty sure keyboards won’t be at the top. Despite being the part of the computer we touch most, they’re more like elbows than, say, breasts. They’re functional, and you wouldn’t want to go without, but do they get your heart racing? No.
Nevertheless, you’ll need a keyboard for email. And for newsgroups. And for chat. Even the Web, with its lengthy addresses and endless forms, requires you to prod some sort of letter making device. You might as well have a decent one, then, so you can type at reasonable speed and in some sort of comfort.
The Querty Conundrum
When Cristopher Latham Sholes invented the mechanical typewriter in the late 1860s, the design of its innards meant the mechanical arms tended to jam when you typed adjacent letters in quick succession. He solved the problem by rearranging the keys to separate common letter pairs, thereby giving us qwertyuiop, asdfghkl and zxcvbnm. Incidentally, the Sholes & Glidden Typewriter was manufactured by Remington – the pen may be mightier than the sword, but typewriters don’t make you as famous as guns.
Anti-qwertians says that Sholes wanted to slow typists down. Pro-qwertians point out that by reducing jams, he in fact enabled them to type faster. Either way, the problematic arms are long gone, so there’s no reason to retain the qwerty layout. So said Professor John Dvorak, anyway, and in 1932 he set out to build a better keyboard.
Dvorak’s keyboard puts the vowels and the five most common consonants in the middle row. Pro-Dvorakans say his arrangement is more efficient. Anti-Dvorakans say he conducted many of the tests himself, and that other experiments show little difference between the layouts. Millions of qwerty trained typists expressed no interest whatsoever in starting all over again. Dvorak’s design never really took off.
The Dvorak layout is still out there, probably because journalists lumbered with writing about keyboards keep trotting out this story. Dedicated Dvorak keyboards aren’t common, but you don’t actually need one – you just switch your operating system into Dvorak mode. Pressing the qwerty ‘H’ will then give you the Dvorak ‘D’, which sounds hideously confusing but isn’t, because you aren’t supposed to be looking at the keys. If you need to cheat, you can use stickers to re-label them.
The RSI Debacle
Arguments about the arrangement of the keys have been overtaken by the debate about the inherent evilness of all keyboards. Nobody wants to make a definite statement about the relationship between typing and pain, numbness or tingling in the hands and wrists, because millions of office workers might up and sue.
However, to quote Logitech’s comfort guidelines, ‘some research suggests that long periods of repetitive motion, using an improperly set up work space, incorrect body position, and poor work habits may be associated with physical discomfort and injury to nerves, tendons and muscles’. Such injuries are generally known as repetitive strain injuries (RSIs), although you can find a host of other acronyms in the Typing Injury.
Despite the fact that RSIs might or might not exist, depending on whether you talk to typists or employers (or the lawyers for either party), several manufacturers have added sexy ergonomic curves to their keyboards. Most split the keys into two groups, set at a slight angle, so your wrists end up further apart with your hands turned slightly inwards. Some have a hinge so you can adjust the angle, and others are ‘dished’ to match the shape of your hand. Budget models may simply have a wrist rest for when your thoughts dry up.
Ergonomic keyboards aren’t panacea, and manufacturers are careful to point out that you still need to sit up straight, and take breaks, and consult a qualified health professional if your wrists hurt. They also take a bit of getting used to, especially if you’ve been a dedicated user of regular keyboards.
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how to change the keyboard set- up?
I just bought a mini dell inspiron 910. It has windows xp and Im trying to change the keyboard set-up because when i press the button @ - it types different character. I press and hold shift then the number 2 but it dows not type the symbol @. Please help. Thanks!
Go into the control panel and open region and language options, select the keyboard for your country and location.
Luxeed U5 Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard dazzles
Luxeed U5 Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard is available at ThinkGeek for $139.99-$149.99. There are a lot of lighted keyboards out there but this one is unique. It features 430 LEDs that are capable of lighting each key individually to your own color choice. ...
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