About a month after getting the Freestyle 2, I started to have issues. At first I only noticed it with the arrow keys. Occasionally an additional key press was registered. I noticed it especially with the back arrow. Occasionally it would also type a slash. Then came the really bad day. Every time I pressed zero, it also send a HOME. I tried various things. Unplugging. Different USB port. Nothing helped. I looked online and saw that there was a new firmware that dealt with ghosting. First issue I ran into was the button you need to press to flash it, was behind a glued on plastic cover. There were no videos, just a text description. I really wasn’t sure if I had the model where you could flash a new firmware or the model where you can’t. According to the model number, I should have had the one that was flashable.

I opened a case with Kinesis and the technician was also stumped. Apparently they had changed that cover and he didn’t know that. It took a bit to get an answer back where my keyboard was basically unusable. I managed to get the little plastic cover off and flash the new firmware. This fixed at least the zero/HOME issue. I started to use it again but the arrow key issue was still back. Not as annoying but still not good. I heard back from support and they offered to replace the keyboard AND upgrade me to the Kinesis Pro. I agreed, but it took a bit because I am in Canada. I had two options. Send back to them directly, which would have meant extra taxes, or send it to their partner in Canada, which also meant less shipping costs for me. Just had to be coordinated with the partner first.

I got the new Keyboard yesterday and so far I am really impressed. It is way better than the Freestyle2. I got quickly back into typing on it again. I typed all this on the Pro. I also love that it is programmable. The app that can be used is nice. Would be nice if there was a linux app as well. There might be one to download, I haven’t looked yet. That being said, I already crated a macro for one piece of text that I have to type on a somewhat regular basis. Until now I copied it from my knowledge database. Now I have it programmed into the keyboard and it types itself. Rather neat. The only thing that would be a nice improvement for the App is that you can paste in a macro that you prepare in a text editor. Basically write all the instructions yourself. I am sure I can simply find the file on the drive the keyboard presents and do it myself, but would be nice to do it from the app.

As I said, I do a lot on linux. Which means I use the ESC key a lot. The ESC key is rather far away. A key that is close by and I basically never use is caps lock. So remapped that to be ESC. I left the original ESC as is, which means right now, I don’t have a caps lock. Which is fine with me. If it becomes an issue I can simply remap the ESC key to caps lock.

All in all, I am very happy with the support I got and the new keyboard. I am looking forward to writing a lot on it.