First Impressions
First impression upon unboxing the keyboard is that all of the reviews that I had read were out of date–Kinesis have clearly paid attention to feedback and some of the gripes that I had read about (e.g. having a browser ‘home’ hotkey, making the insert function require the pressing of fn) had been addressed.
As such, the keyboard layout is easily standard enough to allow for a smooth transition from a regular keyboard (Apple wired and wireless keyboards) to the Kinesis–thus far I have not experienced any real slowdown in typing speed.
I will update this review after having used the keyboard for some months, but my first impression of the keyboard has been great. The touch is extremely light, the adjustability via the VIP3 attachment makes a pleasing difference, but most of all the typing experience is simply much more enjoyable than the wireless Apple keyboard, which requires that you keep your hands close together all day.
So far the only downside is that the escape key is an absurdly long way from the home row. I have sorted this in Vim by mapping other keys to escape however, so this is not a big deal.