Kinesis Advantage

I have become convinced — once you get past the kind of strange layout of this beast, it's the finest mechanical keyboard in the world. It's my desert island keyboard. I've side-eyed the Freestyle Edge a little, but I'm pretty sure that this is the keyboard for me.

But after six long years, the Kinesis Advantage finally bit it.

Now, admittedly, this was because I had spilled an entire cola into the keyboard, and then did a pretty piss-poor job of cleaning it out thereafter. Having undergone a lot of similar abuse, I’d hoped this keyboard would survive with nothing but a slightly gummy shift key (which happened to the other side of the keyboard years earlier) — but no, the whole right side of the keyboard was well and truly borked.

Oh well, time to buy a new one!

Did you know that there’s only one place in Canada that sells these? And that they have a website that is a relic from the very early days of the internet?

Their order system isn’t even attached to a payment processor — having filled out the form, a sales lady named Dawn calls from Saskatchewan to collect the requisite credit card information. There might be other sales ladies, but for me it was Dawn six years ago and it was Dawn again this time.

It arrived today, and so it is time to give my old keyboard a viking funeral. Presumably it is filled with enough dead skin, sugar, and alcohol at this point that it will go up like a gasoline fire.

The new Kinesis is… almost identical. They bumped the version number, changed the blue to teal, and replaced the membrane function keys with mechanical switch function keys.

The original site didn't record this post's date; this one is approximate.