Infinity Ergo Adjustment

I've had my Infinity Ergo for about a month now. It wasn't quite as magical as I was expecting. I had a *lot* of pain in both of my arms before I got it to a good height/position in general. Trying to move the pods apart right away seemed like a good idea, but it wasn't. I wound up needing to have them closer together, and move them gradually. I found out that you can't make a bunch of big changes all at once. You have to start more where you're used to, and change things slowly over time.

I have the pods about 4" apart now. I picked up a couple of wrist braces to see if they would help. I can't write with the left one at all; it makes the pain in my left arm much worse. I don't know if wearing the right one helps or not, but I can write with it, so that's what I've been doing. It makes it feel like it's hard to "reach" keys with my pinky, though, so I have the right pod of the IE titled so the right side is up higher than the left.

I didn't have to do as much adjusting of the "sensors" as I thought I would. I had some intial problems with the software and calibrating things, and as a result of that, I think I wound up setting it to be more sensitive than I should have. I dialed back a few of the keys, but I'm probably still getting dragged keys that I could avoid if I just turned all the keys up higher. Some of them do need to be low though, I think, so I'm leaving it as-is for now.

It was pretty easy to adjust to pressing keys again, but it still feels like it's taking a lot of effort. I can make the stroke shallower than it is now, but I have it set for the least amount of tension, and I felt like when I made it more shallow, it required more tension. So there is a small bit of depth to the stroke.

I wasn't really able to hit -DZ at all on the LS for some reason, and it's much easier on the IE. Some other keys are easier, too, like -PBLG. I'm getting a lot of weird problems with it still, though. And I don't ever feel like I can just write freely; I still have to very closely monitor what I'm doing at all times.

I did mange to do a lot of really weird things with the pod that made my hands hurt a lot. I think they're back to normal now, but it's still uncomfortable to write in general. I think I had better endurance on the LS. It's tough to tell, because I'm doing more captioning now, where I write for 10 minutes, stop, write for 2, stop, as opposed to being stuck in a class for two hours straight.

The asterisk seems really far away and hard to hit. I emailed the owner and asked him if there's anything I or he could do to bring it a little closer, because the T/D and S/Z are super close together, but he never answered me. I had that problem before I bought the IE, too. I sent two or three emails that never got answered before I wound up just calling to order it. I'll try again after the weekend.

It seems like I have to have a really wide stance with the IE, or else my legs get in the way of the machine and I can't bring it close enough. The software isn't quite as useful as the LS'. With the LS, you can import a file you've written into the software, and it will show you exactly how hard you pressed the key, if at all, which is really helpful with adjusting the sensors. With the IE, all you can do is press the key and see the gauge in realtime, but you can't look at something you've already written that didn't come out right and see exactly what went wrong.

My back pain still seems to be getting worse, although it doesn't bother me much when I sleep. I've been experimenting with different pieces of foam and towels strapped to the back of my chair, but they don't seem to be helping.

My right hand really doesn't like using the mouse. I don't think it's steno-related, but it goes numb and stays painful for hours afterward. I'm going to try a touchpad this weekend.