Interesting article, but the author mentions exactly why I could never get into a location-specific setup like a keyboard and foot pedal; I shift locations far too often (I'm currently working remotely from a Starbucks at the moment).
While maybe not going as far as becoming proficient in whatever setup could be considered the "lowest common denominator", I prefer to use a setup that is flexible across locations and environments. There's a lot of freedom in being able to move about between workstations and locations and still be fast and capable.
A foot pedal is no less discreet and portable than an external mouse, and those are pretty widely used and accepted at coffee shops (it could even be argued that the external mouse consumes more valuable space than the foot pedal - the mouse requires lateral table space and elbow room, while the pedal is literally on the floor beneath your feet).
Likewise I know developers that bring external keyboards like the Kinesis in their backpacks to wherever they want to hack.
Edit: that being said, you're right that it adds up. I believe the author of the article also uses a vertical mouse. That's a lot of gear to haul to Starbucks!
In other words, one might feel uncomfortable being the only person in the coffee shop using a foot pedal because you don't want to break the mold? Seems a poor reason when the foot pedal could boost your productivity and/or prevent injury without adversely affecting your coffee shop neighbors.
And we evolve! :) Eg., it's been acceptable for some time to operate an iPad with an external keyboard at the local hipster coffee shops. I'd argue that anyone using a foot pedal at all is an early adopter - who knows what Starbucks' digital denizens will be using in a couple years? But we will arrive there faster if some of us eschew the lowest common denominator, even if we look funny doing so and have to haul around a peripheral or two or three.
Right, for example you rarely see younger, MacBook owners with the external mice. But when you find middle-aged folks with PC laptops, they are often using little travel mice.
It might be that Mac trackpads are a really good solution. For me, I try to avoid pointer devices, but when I do have to leave the keyboard, it's nice to only travel a couple of inches to the trackpad instead of a foot to the mouse.
I had my laptop pinched last week so I've been on a Mac desktop with a Mighty Mouse. The gesture control is so clumsy compared to what you can do with a trackpad.
No, I'll back Aidos up. I hated trackpads until the first time I used a MacBook. Apple's trackpads are just way easier to be precise with. I have no clue why. It can't be the software, because it's still true when running Windows via Boot Camp.
It is still an age thing. Old people have far worse a time on trackpads, especially on Windows.
I think much of the problem with Windows is in the Synaptics driver. On one Windows machine, I see 5-10% CPU usage whenever my finger's touching the trackpad. The trackpad on that machine works a lot better on Linux. On the other hand, some other trackpads work far better on Windows than on Linux.
One big difference between trackpad behavior on Windows and OS X is that on OS X there's always delay between when your hand touches the trackpad and when the mouse starts moving -- the first N ms are ignored. On Windows, it varies from machine to machine -- for example, on an ASUS machine I have, you need a certain threshold of movement and then the pointer catches up to what its location would be, but with others there's no delay.
I built my own portable mechanical keyboard for precisely this reason; I got spoiled by a nice board at home only to be filled with disappointment every time I went out for a change of scenery at the coffee shop. Now I've got something that almost fits in the pocket, has a nice split angling of the columns, and is designed to work with Emacs from the ground up. (lots of thumb keys)
Any chance you could provide a picture of it or a link to something similar?
Lately I've been using a chromebook with arch whenever I use a laptop ( luckily it's not too often ), and while they keyboard isn't completely awful, going from mechanicals at work and home to a chicklet keyboard is annoying at best. I've been looking for a decent portable mechanical keyboard to throw in my backpack, but so far a densely keyed (not sure if that's the right term?) tenkeyless is the best I've found, and I'm having a hard time imagining a keyboard with all the "extra" keys being almost pocket sized, unless you're bringing back JNCO ;).
It takes a long time to learn since it's a pretty big divergence from the conventional design. It only has 42 keys, but with the fn layer (activated with the thumb rather than an awkward pinky reach you normally see on laptops) you can still hit all the keys you need. The other upside is apart from being much smaller it also means your fingers never have very far to reach, so it's also more comfortable.
I feel like this is the way to go -- It's too much cognitive overhead, IMO, to get used to multiple (very different) keyboard layouts. The Atreus is a nice solution to that, since it's even pocketable. I also disagree with thumb clusters, but that's another story.
(BTW, the article did mention and link the Atreus, so you probably don't need to dance around it like that)
I'm going to guess and say that in any given city a lot more IT specialists work from a fixed workplace all the time.
Also I would guess that a big number of currently wandering IT specialists can switch to fixed workplace (e.g. - random cafeteria vs home/work place) but they currently don't want to for reasons unknown to me.
For me, when I was working on laptop on a previous job I would switch to desktop with ergo keyboard and normal screens immediately if possible. Being impossible I just switched jobs - it was that important to me (after money of course).
While maybe not going as far as becoming proficient in whatever setup could be considered the "lowest common denominator", I prefer to use a setup that is flexible across locations and environments. There's a lot of freedom in being able to move about between workstations and locations and still be fast and capable.