You may wonder why anyone would want to spend money buying an extra keyboard. It seems strange when new PCs generally come with what look like a perfectly decent keyboards.

The answer is that, in some circumstances, keyboards are health hazards. They can inflict pain and, in extreme cases, cause long-term physical damage.

But buying a new ergonomic keyboard isn’t straightforward.

Keyboards can hurt you

Typing injuries were called RSI (repetitive strain injuries) but are now generally described as occupational overuse syndrome or OOS.

Some people believe the business is just a worker compensation rort, but there’s plenty of evidence that keyboard OOS injuries are real. They affects thousands of Australians and New Zealanders every year.

In medical terms the pains might be tendonitis or tenosynovitis.

Both start mildly, with plenty of early warning signs. However, things can quickly turn nasty. In severe cases you could end up with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS), a squeezing of the median nerve as it runs into hand.

If you reach this point, you won’t be capable of typing.

Some poorly designed keyboards are particularly bad because they cause wrists to twist unnaturally. Of course posture, desk and seating height are important – possibly more important than keyboard design  – it might pay to look at adjusting these before investing in an ergonomic keyboard.

Is your mouse worse?

Ergonomics experts warn PC mice can cause more problems than keyboards. If you do a lot of typing, it’s a good idea to learn keyboard short cuts to cut down on mouse use.

New computers usually come with a traditional ’straight’ keyboard. Some manufacturers might describe these as ergonomic, but generally the term is for keyboards that better accommodate the human body.

One ergonomic improvement is to split the conventional keyboard down the middle and then angle the two halves outward. This is particularly helpful for people with broad shoulders as it enables them to hold their wrists at a more comfortable angle.

People with narrow shoulders often find a straight keyboard is preferable. Most split keyboards come with a fixed angle, but some are adjustable and others can even be broken apart.

Another improvement is to have a raised area in front of the keys where you can rest the heels of the palms of your hands. Many laptops are designed this way – it’s better than early designs where the keys started at the front of the case. It is possible to buy separate wrist rests; they come in a variety of designs including rubberised material and gel-filled rests.

Other physical designs include specially recessed keys and giving each key more or less travel – that is the distance that it moves up and down. Some people prefer more travel and audible ‘click’; others are comfortable with silence and a softer touch.

A keyboard with the wrong kind of response will affect your productivity.

Spacing is important

Make sure that the size and spacing of keys is right for the size of your hands.

If you have small hands then smaller keys, bunched fairly closely together will be more comfortable. Some people like small keyboards because they use up less desk space – but it isn’t wise to work in cramped conditions.

Netbooks and laptops are a problem. It may pay to add an external keyboard to these computers when working at home.

Beyond QWERTY

There are keyboards that abandon the familiar QWERTY pattern altogether:

• The Dvorak pattern, which claims to be more efficient and therefore less painful.
• Chording keyboards allow you to use key combinations to create letters. Since your fingers stay on the same keys all the time there’s less chance of RSI.

The problem with both is that you’ll need to relearn your typing skills and you’ll experience difficulty if you ever work at another computer.

The trouble might not be the keyboard but its place on your desk. Generally it should be set slightly lower than the average desk height. Some workplaces use keyboard trays that sit slightly below the desk. The best ones are height adjustable. Most desk trays also allow you to adjust the slope of the keyboard – counter-intuitively experts recommend that if the keyboard slopes at all, it should slope backwards.

Other keyboard trays are detachable and can rest on your lap. A smart alternative is to use a cordless keyboard on your lap.

Watch out for wireless keyboards and mice

People typically have far more trouble with cordless devices than with the corded variety. That’s because they are battery-powered and get progressively harder to use as the batteries run down. If you’re experiencing problems, you can able to solve things quickly simply by moving back to a cord connected mouse and keyboard.

So, is an ergonomic keyboard essential or not?

Yes and no. The most essential thing is to find a comfortable, reliable keyboard. For years I used an ergonomic keyboard and mouse yet still suffered from occasional pains. That’s because they were wireless devices. The pains went away for ever when I ditched the wireless keyboard and mouse for the flat, but cabled keyboard that came with my computer and invested $40 in a brand new ergonomic, yet cabled mouse. They’re not as cool as the wireless alternatives, but they are reliable and comfortable. That’s more important.

One last tip; if you’re in serious pain, try voice recognition software. It’s far from perfect and you will need to do some keyboarding, yet it has reached the point where it works well enough to rest sore hands.

Ergonomic Web Sites

Typing injuries

www.tifaq.com/

Includes details on alternatives to conventional keyboards and why you may want to use them.

British RSI FAQ

www.rsi-uk.org.uk/faq.txt

A bare-bones backgrounder to keyboard injuries and RSI.

Carnegie Mellon University Computer Related Repetitive Strain Injuries

www.cmu.edu/rsi/

This useful information site tells you who is at risk, how to avoid keyboard injuries and what to do if they arise.

Healthy Computing

www.healthycomputing.com

Wide-ranging site looking at a variety of computer health-related issues. There’s a good section on ergonomic issues for kids.

Security Software Shopping Tips

Go for the suite spot

You’ll need antivirus, firewall and antispyware software to keep your PCs safe from most threats. While some expert users manage to run individual products from different vendors, the applications may not play nicely together. You may even cause your system to crash. Suites are designed so that applications dovetail smoothly. They also give you a single interface to control everything. What’s more, suites are priced to be much cheaper than the sum of their components. You may need to find separate spam filtering, anti-phishing and adware software.

Check the extras

Security suites often go beyond the basics offering features like parental controls, spam filtering and tools to stop private information like passwords, account details or telephone numbers from being transmitted.

Don’t double up

It’s tempting to think that running two firewalls or antivirus programs will make your system doubly secure – it won’t. Overlapping security tools can create havoc, slowing your computer and making it hard to troubleshoot problems. Stick with one of everything, it’ll be safer not to mention cheaper.

Watch the calendar

Many commercial security software products come as one or more applications coupled with online links to an automatic updating service. Typically when you buy the product one year’s worth of updates come as part of the deal. When the year is up you’ll be given an option to pay a fee to get a further year’s worth of updates.

That’s convenient, but typically the cost of an extra year’s subscription is more or less the same as what you’d pay for new versions of the applications. As security vendors are constantly updating their technology and adding more features to their products – buying a fresh product is often the better option. What’s more, avoiding the subscription gives you an opportunity to avoid lock-in and move to a rival company’s offering.

Also, watch out for arrangements where a security software company takes your credit card details and automatically invoices for updates. They try to tell you this is a service to make life easier for you. In fact, they do it because they make a lot more money that way.

See also:

Computer security guide: 1 introduction
Computer security guide: 2 what are the main threats?
Computer security guide: 3 defensive software
Computer security guide: 5 what to buy or download for free

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It’s not a question of whether the virus-writers, phishers, spam merchants and other assorted online nuisances are targeting your PC, your money and your privacy, it’s a question of how successful they will be.

Your computer and your data are potentially vulnerable from the moment you hit the on button. The threats multiply when you go online. While there’s no sure way to make your system safe, there’s plenty you can do to minimise the risks.

The Big Picture
The risks are real. At the less worrying end of the spectrum, unscrupulous neighbours might hop onto to your wireless router so they can surf the web on your ISP account or pranksters may load your PC with troublesome viruses.

There are people, including in some cases seemingly respectable companies, who want to spy on your online activities. More seriously, there are crooks who’d like to control your computer so they can suck money from your bank accounts.

Others want to hijack your machine so they carry out their crimes or even terrorist acts at arm’s length leaving a trail that investigators may track to your front door.

Getting Started
It sounds scary and it can be, but a whole industry has evolved to help keep you safe. These days you need a variety of tools to fight a complex range of security threats (see the next post: Computer security guide: 2 what are the main threats).

At the minimum you should be looking at using an antivirus program, a firewall and some antispyware tools.

This may sound complicated and expensive, but all-in-one security suites can make life considerably easier and help you sleep at night.

These can be particularly helpful if you’re not a security expert because the separate tools in security suites are designed to interact smoothly with each other and provide overlapping protection from today’s nastiest threats which can use a blend of techniques to probe your defences.

Further reading:
Computer security guide: What are the main threats?
Computer security guide: Defensive software
Computer security guide: How to buy security tools
Computer security guide: What to buy or download for free

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A computer buyer’s guide for non-experts.

Buying a PC once meant swimming in shark-infested waters. You only had to wade into a computer store and sleek-looking creatures would circle, hoping to sink their teeth into your credit card.

These days the bites you’ll encounter when shopping for hardware are more likely to be spelt with a “y”. That’s because computer retailing has grown-up; respectable stores have learnt how to sell computers and customers know to avoid the rip-off retailers. Even so there are still predators, so act with caution.

Most independent specialist computer stores in Australia and New Zealand are small fry. While there are swept-up specialist showrooms in swish retail areas, many are in run-down shopping districts, or in industrial or retail parks. You’ll often find them tucked away in suburban backwaters, on the wrong side of the tracks or in the creepy subterranean areas of shopping malls where you might expect to run into a party of orcs. The key word here is low rent.

Inside, store décor can range anywhere from the neurotic tidiness to health-hazard squalor. There might be a few nerdy looking guys working out back in what looks like a pigsty. This is the engineering department. Amongst empty cola cans and fast food wrappers you’ll find state-of-the-art processor chips and disc drives which may end up inside your computer.

Unbranded hardware

As a rule small specialist stores offer unbranded hardware. Or at least unbranded desktop computers. In the trade these are known as white boxes. Wall stains are hidden by posters for companies you’ve never heard of. While brand choice is limited, these guys can often tailor a system to your exact specification or budget in a matter of hours.

And it’ll be cheap. If you’ve already got a monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers, you’ll find good basic desktops start at around $500. Spend $1000 and you’ll have something better than 99 percent of corporate office workers will have on their desks.

In the past small specialist stores would offer unbranded or obscure-brand laptops. These days the portable computers are almost always from well-known multinational companies, though you may see some unfamiliar names.

You’ll find the sharpest prices at the small specialist stores – often saving more that 20 percent on prices elsewhere – but there are risks:

• First, you need to check that the hardware you paid for is exactly what you got (the section at the bottom of this post tells you how to do this). This check applies to all computer purchases from any type of supplier.
• Second, a small store might disappear before your computer’s warranty expires. As a rule of thumb, a store that has been around for more than three years is unlikely to close overnight. With the economy the way it is, small stores are probably no riskier than some of the big ones.
• Third, most of the prosecutions for software piracy involve smaller specialist stores. Make sure you get certificates and boxes for all the software included in your purchase. Be wary of unexpected applications pre-loaded on to the hard disc.
• Fourth, brand name manufacturers often spend a lot of time and effort matching components and fine tuning their hardware. El cheapo computer makers might just visit the lucky dip barrel and shove in whatever parts come to hand causing problems down the track. You might even find second-hand components in your machine. Of course, the big brands often play similar games with their discount product lines.
• Finally, don’t part with your money until you have the hardware.

Bigger range, less choice

Larger electronic retailers such as Dick Smith and Harvey Norman tend to carry a lot more stock than the specialists. They often offer a bigger range of prebuilt systems as well – though this may vary depending on store size. You’ll find the brands are mainly recognisable and although they may offer limited flexibility, you are usually restricted to buying complete systems with all the extras. Don’t expect to choose from a smorgasbord of components either. Prices are usually higher than elsewhere.

Electronics retailers tend to keep machines on shelves and are less keen to let you test drive, especially when they are busy. Their focus is on a quick turnover of stock so expect to find less emphasis on customer service and a more intense emphasis on selling: touch a machine and a sales rep will approach you. You might find slightly more pressure to buy.

In some cases sales staff are ‘incentivised’ to push certain product lines. For example if they sell so many models in a particular range, they’ll get a free holiday in Fiji. So treat brand recommendations with caution. The sales reps are also often expected to flog you extra stuff once you’ve made a big decision – it’s the computer retail equivalent of “do you want to upsize?”

Variable after sales support

After sales support varies drastically from retailer to retailer so check individual store reputations with your friends before buying. You may find support is referred back to the manufacturer, but legally the store is obliged to satisfy the customer.

Watch out for the special deals in the electrical stores. Old stock gets shifted at exceptionally competitive prices, but some so-called bargains are the rubbish products more savvy consumers have left on the shelves for a good reason.

Smaller independent specialist stores are far more common on the ground in Australia than in New Zealand, where a handful of big chains dominate. Australia also has large specialist outlets like Sydney-based Harris Technology where you’ll find neat rows of computers and printers along with other kit logically organised around the store.

In practice they offer a far more comprehensive range of hardware, a wider choice of brands, lots of small extra components and, usually, better sales advice. Prices are comparable with elsewhere.

Staff in the big specialist stores are better informed than in the electronic retailers. Not only do they know more about the items they sell, but they know about what is going on in the industry. What’s more, because they offer a wider range of hardware they feel less pressure to push inappropriate products. You’ll get good after sales support, these stores have proper workshops, but if you invalidate your warranty it may prove expensive.

Buying PCs direct from the manufacturer

If you already know exactly what you want and have better things to do with your time than listening to sales patter then you may prefer one of the direct sales operations.

Dell runs the largest and best known direct PC sales operation. Apple, Acer and Harris Technology also offer direct online sales, although Harris doesn’t make its hardware. Some specialist stores also offer direct sales.

When you buy a computer from a direct sales operation you can usually chose a basic model and then customise it to your heart’s content. Dell’s team will then assemble your chosen hardware and deliver it directly to your home.

Buying direct is convenient and, in general, you have a lot more flexibility than buying a brand name PC in a store. That’s because the machine is assembled to your specifications. It is hard to choose components online if you’re not technical, but telephone sales people can walk most beginners through the process.

One word of warning though, many direct sales companies speak in a strange coded language that isn’t immediately obvious to consumers. Years ago, I purchased a Dell via telephone after visiting the web site I thought I was buying a computer complete with a DVD burner. When the computer turned up, it couldn’t write DVDs. The sales critter (probably in a far-flung third world country) didn’t make it clear that a ‘combo’ drive could read and write CDs and only read DVDs. My complaints were not accepted.

Dell: a mixed experience

Personally this experience, along with a few other problems, means I will never buy from Dell again. However, many of my friends and colleagues are happy with the company.

One other thing to watch with Dell is that the company’s special offers are good value, but once you alter the specification, the costs quickly rise.

Many computer makers, including direct sales operations like Dell, offer telephone after sales support – mainly during office hours. They’ll help you set up the system and troubleshoot problems; if something needs fixing you’ll have to courier or take the machine to their warehouse and wait for a few days. You may be able to pay extra for on-site support. Specialist computer stores usually offer their own in-house after sales support.

Don’t underestimate the need for support. Everyone buying a new computer needs help at one stage or other – even experts. It’s worth paying a few dollars more for your hardware if you can get someone to hold your hand while you set things up.

Finding the right sales person

Finding the right shop is hard enough, but for most people finding the right sales critter once you reach a store is even more important.

If you’re a seriously techno-savvy consumer, the last thing you need is someone who talks like a kindergarten teacher on mogadon. Some insist on explaining everything as if reading flashcards. On the other hand, if you’re a novice, excitable nerdy guys with cartoon ties speaking incomprehensible jargon is off-putting.

Older readers might remember the TV comedy sketch where Rowan Atkinson goes into an electronics retailer and asks for a ‘gramophone’. The smart-alec sales assistant then spends the next few minutes giving the customer a hard time because he doesn’t know the meaning of terms like woofers, tweeters and Dolby. If this still exists on videotape it should be mandatory viewing for everyone who sells computers.

While there’s still a tendency for some retail staff to patronise customers, the good news is that these days they are much better trained. Individual sales people may have difficultly getting the balance right, but in most places there is at least one person who can communicate with you on the right level.

Things to watch out for

The other thing to watch for is over-zealous sales people. Some retail computer stores put their staff on group bonus schemes; others run on an individual commission basis. This means the more they sell, the more they earn. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but take care.

Avoid being hurried into any purchase. In particular avoid anyone who tells you that a particular price is “only for today”. Watch out for any extras, only buy what you know is necessary. Retailers earn wafer thin margins on hardware, but the profits on other items can be sky-high.

In some small computer stores, the person who runs the shop is the owner. They may haggle. Don’t expect to negotiate a much lower price if you’re just buying a PC – specialist stores typically already have rock-bottom prices, work off tiny margins and have little room to move. However, if you want to buy a bundle of stuff in a single transaction, they may be able to offer a good deal.

How to quickly check computer hardware

To get a list of the hardware components inside a Windows Vista machine click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information. This isn’t always 100 percent accurate, but it is a good guide. Macintosh users can find more limited information by pulling down the Apple Menu and click “About this computer”.

Businesses think long and hard before buying computer hardware and software. Some work from finely-tuned technology plans. Others might take a more ad hoc approach, making up the rules as they go. This may sound unwise, but it has the advantage of flexibility.

Some managers consult with their end users and technology specialists before drawing up specification lists. Often business buyers prefer the security of a known brand, some seek comfort in long-standing ‘technology relationships’, and others like the prices or local service offered by smaller outlets.

Whatever the details, business people tend to put a lot of research and effort into their system and software purchases. So should you. But it’s easy to hung up worrying about the wrong things.

While it makes sense to plan software buying in detail, this might not be the case for hardware. After all, modern computer hardware is a commodity. There isn’t much difference between one brand and another. Inside they are pretty much the same. After years of conducting in-depth benchmarks (amongst other jobs I edited the Australian edition of PC Magazine), I can confirm that the difference between the top-performing brands and the average is rarely more than a couple of percent.

Whisper it quietly, but this difference is well under the margin of error. Indeed, often, when classes of computers are compared, the performance spread between the highest and the lowest is often less than the margin of error. And even if it isn’t, I challenge anyone to sit at any two similarly configured PCs and tell me which one is running five percent faster. You won’t notice any difference running Microsoft Word or working online with Firefox or any other browser.

Frankly, for people in business performance is an issue, but the performance that matters is that between different classes of machine rather than different models within a class.

Oh and before we go any further, if raw processing speed really worries you, most of the time you can boost it simply by adding more Ram. Spending a $100 on extra memory chips is the best IT investment you’ll ever make. Not only will this kick-start sluggish systems, but you’ll be able to do more work and work more productively.

Of course, benchmarking does show up poorly performing products. But these are as likely to come from the most prestigious stables as from the cheaper no-brand operators. By all means use benchmarking information to avoid the dogs, but in the long run, average performing machines are as good a purchase as the fastest.

While the performance spread of similarly specified PCs is minimal, prices tend to have more variation. Both follow the well-known bell curve. But the top and bottom performers in any class might deviate three or four percent from the average, while prices can vary by up to 20 percent; and even more if we include Apple’s expensive hardware in the list.

You might expect that prices vary with performance. They may, but only up to a point. Statisticians and economists call the way two variables interact; ‘correlation’. So, if price and performance ratings match, they would be highly correlated, if cheaper machines performed best, then they would have negative correlation. In reality, there is merely a weak correlation between price and performance.

If you draw a graph and plot performance against price, there would be some kind of pattern, but a number of points on the graph would sit a long way from any trend line or cluster. These are the machines to watch. Those that are nearest to the corner where performance is sluggish and prices are high represent the worst value. Those in the opposite corner represent the best.

It might seem like a lot of work, but this can be a worthwhile process if you need to buy a lot of hardware. However, it is worth remembering that differences in performance rarely matter, dollars in your pocket do.

So, what PC purchasing lessons are there for individuals and small business owners? The key is to get your IT spending into perspective. When shopping for hardware, you should pay more attention to the features included in the package than to any benchmarking details. Remember warranties and reliability are more important than performance. And above all else, remind yourself that a low-price, average performing system plus $100 spent on Ram will almost always give you a better return than a pricey speed demon.