According to an article at theinquirer.net, a Microsft employee admitted to an audience of 400 system integrators that "despite extensive research that resulted in the Natural Keyboard, it has now realized that actually [utilizes] rather an unnatural design."
I'm not really surprised. A split keyboard can be good because it straightens the wrists into a more natural position when typing, but the Microsoft Natural Keyboard doesn't really address the tendency for typers to crook their wrists up to type (actually the raised angle of the keyboard may encourage that). Some other keyboards that I've found to be more useful are the Touchstream and Kinesis Contoured Keyboards.
The 3M site http://www.3m.com/us/office/myworkspace/workspace_eval.jhtml contains a workspace evaluation feature to help make your workspace ergonomically sound.
Posted by: John Kalka | November 12, 2004 at 11:36 AM