The Kinesis Advantage contoured ergonomic keyboard. Once you've used it for a few weeks, regular keyboards feel awkward and uncomfortable. They are pricy and completely worth it.
That keyboard took me 3 months to use (to be fair I was also switching to Dvorak). Luckily (?) this was while I was sidelined in a bike to car a collision. I have struggled with RSI and it really changed my life. But I agree it's not for everyone. For starters you definitely need large hands!
I had one for around 6 months and always found it frustrating to use. Eventually gritted my teeth and started to use it all the time and it's been a huge relief on my hands. Considering getting another one for home so I don't have to lug it back and forth to the office.
You may have given up prematurely. It took me a month or so to get used to it. I used the Kinesis Freestyle before, still expensive, but lasted me for years and years.
I tried to like it but returned it because it made a loud ping noise whenever a key was pressed and hit the back plate. They layout was fine but the construction just did not feel like $400.
That's hard to believe, their Dvorak/Qwerty version has four or five different keys completely mislabeled, which made me return it because I couldn't trust the product any more.
Which keys? I didn't find that to be the case -- but even if it were, one of the features of this keyboard is you can remap any of the keys to your liking.
The only thing that sucks is the rubber keys, especially ESC, especially for vim users. In contrast, having meta+ctl keys on thumbs for emacs users is huge.
