Same in Emacs. I always watch with fascination (and some frustration) when my friends and coworkers use IDEs—Visual Studio and Xcode, mainly. Some navigational tasks are much faster with pointing or gesturing, but many basic tasks require the same context switch between mouse and keyboard, which I can’t tolerate.
My desktop is currently lacking a screen, but I have purchased a small Thinkpad keyboard for it: great, lite keyboard with a trackpoint - the trackpoint essentially solves the context switch problem and is good enough for everything apart from games.
That's not a context switch. Changing to email is a context switch.
Using a mouse, or trackball, or trackpad, is just input. On my laptop, I don't even lift off of home row to 'mouse' -- I just move my thumb.
At my work desktop, I've got one of those apple wireless keyboards and trackpads and it's actually quite ergonomic, except for the staggered keys.
If I were to switch out, I'd probably get a Kinesis Advantage (I once had a QD Ergo Pro) or a TEK or a TypeMatrix thanks to suggestions in this thread. All three have straight-line keys.
The old ergo I had wore out because I think it was a pre-cherry design.
What slows me down isn’t necessarily the same as what does you. I find it difficult to start engaging with a pointing device after using a keyboard, though as I said, it is quite fast for many tasks once you’re already in that mode.
Furthermore, it’s possible that I am simply out of practice using pointing devices, because I don’t generally—when drawing or modelling I use a tablet. Absolute space is very different from relative space.
