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Non-Traditional Keyboard Reviews
A reader writes "MSNBC has posted a story about 3 weird new keyboards - the Keybowl, the DataHand, and the Half Keyboard. Pretty bizarre stuff." Both Rob and I played around with the one from Ergointerfaces who are releasing an updated version soon - and we had AskSlashdot on it a while ago - but what do you folks think?
here are some links that have to do with my post. First, the TIME DIGITAL article That is the article about this keyboard.
The second article: The keyboard I was talking about...it is a kinesis keyboard. SUper cool. I want one. Check out the kinesis thing though..it is really cool. They should have name this the keybowl..it would have made sense.
The anti-salmon
On the advice of an old ask slashdot I bought the $500CAD Kinesis contoured keyboard. The price is very steep, however it has been well worth it. If the keyboard starts to act funny after spilling coke in it, just send it back and they will fix it up for about $50usd.
I no longer have pains in my wrists.
The keyboard switches between dvorak and qwerty with ease. It took a little while to learn dvorak, but again, it is well worth it. If you are ever stuck at a qwerty keyboard it will slow you down a bit, however you can always just look at the letters on the keyboard to figure out where you should be putting your fingers. If you are using a windows machine it is very easy to map a qwerty keyboard to a dvorak layout - just go into control panel/keyboard and change the language to us dvorak.
I also use a Wacom graphire tablet instead of a mouse. This also has greatly reduced repetive stress.
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I'm still waiting for the folding data-entry device with half the keyboard on either side of a vertically oriented keyboard. The "accordian style" playing is supposed to be much easier on the wrists, fingers, arms, shoulders, etc., and the device could be used with wearables. Of course, there should be optional unfolding for when we sit at a largish flat surface.
FFFish, that makes lots of sense. There is one thing that I might say in defense of the Half Keyboard, though (no economic interest, although I did download the demo, have not tried it yet...). Since this is designed/recommended for use with a PDA, I am assuming that the average user (or a lot of them) are going back to a full-size keyboard when they get home. I am guessing that learning a whole new keyboard layout would make that difficult, and the Half-Keyboard less so.
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
I haven't tried any of these hardware keyboard replacements, but I have to say that if you're a handheld user, it's worth trying the Fitaly software keyboard. I've only had it for a couple days, and I'm already much faster at text input.
Actually, Braille is typed with 6 keys (in positions SDFJKL essentially) and space bar. Of the 2^6 - 1 combinations, 26 are alphas (there is a capital prefix character), A-J double as [0-9] (with a separate numeric prefix), and the remainder code punctuation and dipthongs and other common letter combinations. But, yes, my wife types as fast on it as she can on QWERTY.
I was under the impression that the qwerty keyboard was designed to *slow down* typists. Back in the typewriter days they would type so fast that the heads would jam as they flew towards the the paper. Can anyone clarify?
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
That's odd, my Kinesis ergo stops at T too.. I still have a problem typing 5 instead of 6 due to some left index dominance from learning qwerty.. I have my board set on Dvorak mode. It's one of the most efficient keyboards, and I rarely feel fatigued from typing for extended periods of time.
Lowmag.net
I've been using a Kinesis Ergo Contoured Keyboard for over a year, for 10+ hours a day. Other than the initial 2 week muscle adjustment period, my hands no longer hurt, they no longer go numb after a long day at work. The cool think about it everybody who walks by your cubicle will say to you "Woah, that's a cool keyboard." Also, I went from 50 wpm on a normal keyboard to 85+ with the Kinesis and I'm using the QWERTY layout right now. check it out a http://www.kinesis-ergo.com P.S. Looks like they just released a new keyboard - though I'll be sticking with the Contoured model. I'm not affiliated with Kinesis-Ergo in any way - I just think their keyboards rock! Wouldn't you be this enthusiastic about something that saved your hands?
For anyone who is sick of trying to find the most common order of letters in the english language (Letter frequency) they are: "etrinoasdchfupmygwvbxkqlz", most of which dvorak falls either on home row or strong fingers.
Note on a dvorak layout, l and z are the only "letters" that lay on the right pinky off of home row. This is a position that I consider to be nauseating. If any of you took typing class, you may have noticed a tingling feeling after typing drills on your pinkys. I don't know, 'bout you, but that always made me nauseous.
Anyway, enough about nausea, the point is that the two least used keys are on weak fingers just like in qwerty. However, the most important are on strong fingers, or one row above home, an easier position to reach than one row below..
Lowmag.net
You hit the Shift key twice and then hit the slash key (the one with the big Z on it).
Edgar
How did you get a company to produce your product from that idea?
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
No. The conclusion of the study was that "no competing keyboard has offered enough advantage to warrant a change."
That is to say, Dvorak's advantages aren't enough to overcome the time it takes to relearn for someone who already knows QWERTY. That is not the same as having no advantages. It's also rather subjective - I found Dvorak rather easy to learn, but it might be more difficult for others.
Consider that the study was done before "carpal tunnel" was part of the vernacular. The layout might have more advantages than typing speed, which is the only thing they considered.
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
says that the one handed keyboard idea was coined during a game of Virtual Valerie. Notice that it is left handed, too.
In a report from IBM, that I read in 1996, it's not the keyboard or the shape of the keyboard, but it is how well the keyboard fits the user. Watch the position of the keyboard to the mouse, the user, and the display. It helps to use the same keyboard at each computer that you use.
No matter how good the keyboard is, there is no substitute for proper breaks, stretching, and warm-up.
How do I know? I lived with keyboard problems.
Fight Spammers!
...silly to me that companies push keyboards that are inferior to the qwerty model. Are there not keyboards out there that are superior? It makes NO sense to use a keybaord that slows your typing down, regardless of ergonomics or the "coolness" factor. I hope the dotcom meltdown gets these guys too. Besides, another genneration or two of Dragon/Viavoice, and we won't need a keyboard.
um.. I done, you can stop reading...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
I play quite alot of quake3 1v1 and the half keyboard sounds interesting. In 1v1 to be able to hit shift to switch 'wasd' from movement keys to weapon selection keys would be quit usefull. And a miraid of other functions during gameing.
For example, to type the letter "a," a typist moves the left dome to the left and the right dome toward the computer screen. Pressing one of the domes down first generates a capital "A."
Ah, missed that. Thanks.
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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
They didn't review the Happy Hacker keyboard because it doesn't really ease the pain of repetitive stress injury. The goal of the article was to discuss RSI-preventing keyboards, and a keyboard that would fit on a PDA. The Happy Hacker, great as it may be, does not fit either of those qualifications.
What's your damage, Heather?
Hell with all these fancy-shmancy keyboards. PC keyboard manufacturers can't even get a normal key layout right. CTRL goes above the left Shift key and Caps Lock goes below that Shift. Toss a Compose under the right Shift, add a few Metas to either side of the space bar, and I'll not have to readjust to a PC keyboard when I'm forced to use one. Oh, and stop making Enter/Return so huge - you're hogging up the space where Backspace should go, so we can fit tilde in the upper right and bring Esc back down next to 1, where it belongs.
This is not a Fugazi
Got Warez?
QWERTY keyboards were expressly designed to be inferior
Mostly an urban myth popularized by Dvorak.
Reason.com
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:) That killed me too. I think the jkl; keys in vi were a bit arbitrary anyhoo. how's about lrud? they are not in a row together, but they are at least by word.. I'm ok with vi in both qty and dvk keyboards. I don't see a problem.. like you sad, memorization is possible on both keyboards..
Lowmag.net
Actually, that's not true. It would take you a lot longer to learn an entirely new layout (~10 to 120 times as long).
It would take about 30 hours of practice to ackieve 22 wpm on a new keyboard layout, versus (thanks to skill transfer) about 3 hours on a HalfKeyboard. One journalist that reviewed the product got that fast after only 15 minutes of practice.
Besides, using the left hand on a HalfKeyboard is pretty close to optimal. It is more optimal than Half-Dvoark and also more optimal than a chord keyboard. References are in the paper.
It's well worth noting that in playing piano, the human brain *does* *not* rely on using the same finger on the key each time.
You are correct, and that (in part) is why it takes so long to learn to play piano. The hand mapping on a piano violates body symmetry. Also, there generally is no skill transfer involved, whereas the HalfKeyboard was designed to facilitate skill transfer.
This research has been done by others, and is discussed in the paper. As I said, it would take a lot longer to learn an optimal layout.
Well, you tell me... If there were 2 one-handed keyboards for sale, an optimal one that took 30 hours to learn, and a near-optimal one that took 15 minutes to learn, which one would you buy?
Also, the optimal keyboard would require you to memorize a whole new keyboard layout, and re-learn how to type. The near-optimal layout requires no memorization and uses your existing typing skills.
Which one do you think most people would want?
Edgar
QWERTY was designed to split common digraphs between hands. This reduces jams (which occurred when adjacent letters were pressed) and has the side effect of making typing faster.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does anyone have ANY idea where I could get one of these, or something similar, for a PS/2 port to replace my mouse?
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grep -ri 'should work'
I've worked with brainwave sensing stuff, which is exactly why I want something more physical. You're suggesting technology which will be as good or better at interpreting signals from our brain than our own nervous system. From what I've seen, we're an incredibly long way from that...
BTW, not a perfect analogy, but why do you plug your printer into your computer's parallel port? Why not just hook it directly to the pins on the CPU?
Actually, the majority of typing is done with letters on the left side of the keyboard. I think the split is something like 70%/30%. Clusters on the left side are more common than "left right left right" patterns.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I could see a use for a half keyboard like that, if I could just have 2 of them, one for each hand!
But seriously, I'm always troubled by the presence of the numeric keypad on the right side of my keyboard. When I want to sit straight in front of the alphabetic part of the keyboard my mouse is too far away to use comfortably. This conflicts with my physical therapist's instructions to keep my mouse close to my body to reduce the strain. When I sit correctly to use my mouse, my keyboard is slightly to my left. I don't move my keyboard to the middle just to type three words, so this usually results in me having both my mouse too far away and my keyboard slightly to my left, increasing the strain on my hands needlessly because I could very well do without the numeric section on the keyboard. That's why I would like to have two of these half keyboards, but I'd rather have just one keyboard without the numeric section.
Well, it's my company that's producing the product. I wasn't too difficult to convince.
Edgar
Looking at the way I use my fingers when I touch type, shouldn't it be
q=[ w=p e=o r=i t=u y=y (you have t=y)
a=; s=l d=k f=j g=h (as you have)
z=. x=, c=m v=n b=b (you have b=n)
?
It costs an extra key and extra width, but I would have thought it would be worth it?
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What happens when you take the time to learn and become proficient in DVORAK, then you turn around and realize that basically every other computer in the world is QWERTY. You'd have trouble if you had to use somebody elses computer, another lab, a kiosk or whatever. Sure, many DVORAK boards have a QWERTY switch for when your friends come over, but going the other way takes some doing.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Try MouseTool.com for a Windows program that allows you to use the mouse without clicking it.
It just became open source, so a Linux version should be in the works soon.
Here's my big question:
Why on *earth* is it a QWERT layout (looks like the Y got whacked by a function key)?!
I should think that when cutting the number of keys to a minimum, it would be imperative to put the most-used keys at the easiest-to-access level. Q and Z could be submerged three levels deep and no one is likely to much miss them... but bury "i" beneath a function-shift, and we're talking a major PITA.
It sure looks to me like the user is going to have to relearn to type, what with having to do everything with one hand -- so why not have them learn something efficient?
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My Kinesis Rocks! I've been using one for over a year. No more numb hands after a long day at work. Not too expensive either ($150-170 for the base model)
..and that's why i keep the sig. i get a hell of a laugh from people who think they're clever when really they're too clueless to get the joke :)
- j
Yes, a dvorak user should remap the keys for her software. I configure every application I use to suit my needs. I expect programs to do what I want them to. You don't use hjkl to navigate you those four keys. Remap them and save your precious dot files. I also have a script 'mama' that changes the keyboard layout. 'm' and 'a' are the same in either layout.
Why use linux if your not using linux?
Cheers Andrew
Out of morbid curiousity, I must ask... how did you mistype "QWERTY" as "QUERTY"?!?!
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... being advertised in the next issue of high times.
I agree with this. I never really learned how to type until I switched to dvorak. I could type but need to look at the keys when typing qwerty. Once I learned to use dvorak I could type with my eyes closed. I'll still switch from dvorak to qwerty unconciously with out changing my typing speed if I look at the key board.
Cheers Andrew
I have a datahand, I have that scooped out keyboard that flashes buy on the front page of http://www.ergointerfaces.com/, I've gone through lots of ordinary keyboards because they hurt in verying degrees, let me share what I know.
The Kenesis (scooped out keyboard), nice shape, really crappy key action, a nightmare.
Datahand, very nice hardware and construction, very very very expensive. Taking dictation is one thing, but using a shell and emacs, with all the key combinations, requires a whole other level of proficiency. Also a warning, after suffering RSI for a while I got a datahand, learned how to use it, got allured into the speed and short movements, and crashed and burned. Was in pain for months.
Just bought a Logitec remote keyboard, real harsh action. The Logitec fancy trackball, whatever its called (FX), was so bad I had to take it back because of the difficult buttons.
The real secret to low impact keyboarding is typing with two fingers, period. And if thats to uncomfortable use two pencils held in a stabbing position, erasures down.
If you feel any typing pain at all run out and get this book: "Its not carpel tunnel syndrome".
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
hey... there's a demo for mac or pc keyboards, but what about a X input style keyboard driver/mapping to let you use one handed entry on a regular keyboard all the time? should be a mostly easy project -- there are devorak mappings for X -- how different could it be?
Actually, the HHKB was just what I needed to make my hands feel better; its not the main selling point but whatever it was that traditional keyboards were doing was solved by the HHKB.
Likewise, they market a Palm extension for the HHKB, if memory serves.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Since my fingers don't move as much and they don't move in such odd ways, just about the only time I have to hit the backspace key is when I change my mind about what I have to type, not just because I hit the wrong key. BIG productivity gain there.
I was FAST with an ordinary keyboard, compared to the general population (about 80-100wpm burst when coding). I'm past 120wpm with the kinesis burst rate, and people always look at my fingers when I sit down to type something because they seem like they're moving so fast.
So there you go. Faster and more ergo. It's not as radical as something like the KeyBowl, but it's a good alternative.
The QWERTY design was used for keyboards because that was the standard for typewriters, and typists were the going to be the natural audience for keyboards. The QWERTY design may take some getting used to, but it is by no means 'inferior'
-- this
That first one looks like something The Professor would have whipped up using a couple of coconuts.
Did anybody get the demo and try it out? It took me 15 seconds to get used to pressing spacebar to get the other half of the keyboard, and another 15 seconds for my fingers to figure out what keys to be hitting. It's amazingly quite a cool product.
Mostly I was trollin' for a 1: Funny ;)
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Anyway, on to the fun part: Demolishing the myths. The Dvorak keyboard may indeed be more "logical" than QWERTY, but it doesn't seem anybody can actually cite any well-controlled, objective studies that demonstrate superior performance. Most of the early claims of its alleged superiority were provided by none other than the keyboard designer (and patent-holder -- no economic self-interest there!) August Dvorak himself.
Here is an article by two economists that rather thoroughly demolishes the claimed superiority of Dvorak. Discussing the results of one controlled comparison test:
Of course, since all of us here (I assume) learned on Qwerty keyboards, that final caveat really doesn't matter.And there's more from the same piece -- this time from someone who is strong Dvorak supporter:
As for the oft-cited VHS vs. Betamax debate, there are numerous problems with the argument that the inferior, but first-to-market technology won. First is that Betamax was actually first to market -- 1975 vs. 1977. Second is that, picture quality aside, VHS was superior to Betamax in one critical dimension that consumers valued: Recording time. The original Betamax format only allowed one hour recordings, vs. four hours for VHS. Thus VHS allowed recording of an entire film, or even an entire American football game, on one cassette. Ad copy made a big deal about this capability. Third is that it's not even clear that Betamax offered the alleged advantage in video quality: In four reviews in Consumer Reports, the Betamax was judged superior to VHS twice, VHS superior to Betamax once, and both equivalent once. Taken together, these factors gave VHS a decisive advantage.
I can't add anything to the Mac-Windows discussion that this audience won't have heard, but I think everyone recognizes that there were far more factors that led to the dominance of Wintel than the fact that it was simply first while Macs were technically better. Certainly lots of us here will remember how Apple used to command truly exorbitant prices for its systems, how it refused to license the OS to give people choices, how its systems lacked expandability, how DOS/Windows systems were compatible with existing software, how Apple abused developers while Microsoft showed them the love, how IBM and other PC manufacturers had strong relationships with brand specifiers in the businesses that were still buying most PCs at that time. Was the MacOS circa, say, 1986 technically superior to Windows at that time? Yeah, sure. But most people weren't buying an OS, they were buying an entire computer -- and looked at as a whole, the outcome of the Wintel-vs.-Mac battle is entirely reasonable without invoking the dubious path-dependence argument.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
...because I've never met a programmer who could type worth a curse. I'm an indifferent typist, 60-70 wpm, I skill I attribute solely to learning how to type on real typewriter keyboards. My error rate is greater on a computer keyboard; my typing rate is fastest on the IBM Selectric keyboard. But I occasionally got praised for being "fast" by programmers whose typing hadn't advanced much past hunt-n-peck. Typing the English language requires a steadier, more sustained typing rhythm than typing broken lines of curly braces and keywords, in any case. Superfast typing isn't _needed_ for programming. Besides, the miniscule amount of time that would be saved by quicker typing is more than offset by the time programmers waste in reading e-mail, chatting on AIM, and reading Slashdot. hyacinthus.
The DataHand can only type 20 characters per hand. They have the demo of only one hand, but in real life you would use one for each hand. Plus they have the standard ALT, SHIFT, and CTL for any extra characters. -Sean
Why on *earth* is it a QWERT layout (looks like the Y got whacked by a function key)?!
From your question, you appear to have missed the point of this keyboard, which is facilitating skill transfer from standard touch typing.
It does indeed work. Most touch typists pick it up very quickly. If you don't believe me, download the demo and try it for yourself. Alternatively, you could just read this:
Edgar
I bought the datahand after six months or so of ZERO typing (just try finishing a CS degree without typing) and my hands were still too weak/painful to really use it, but I did form some impressions. It's a truly new, creative, thoughtful design, but I think ultimately it is flawed. It definitely reduces finger movement, but I've come to think that is a bad thing, rather than a good one. Your hands are basically totally immobilized in this thing and you just kinda push your fingers forward, backward, to the sides, or down (instead of down, forward then down, sideways then down, etc on a normal keyboard.) I found that keeping my hands so still while moving the fingers was actually worse than using a regular keyboard. I think movement is important to keep everything warm and loose.
Thankfully datahand offers a 30day free trial, so i got my money back (-90$ or so for 2 way shipping.)
I have settled on the microsoft elite 2 (30$) after a long period of rehabilitation. For the long story, see link in my sig. For short story, stretch, stretch, stretch, massage, and strengthen.
Feel free to email me.
Edgar,
You mention on the website that a software version of the half-keyboard was written. Is that available somewhere?
I'm considering the hardware half-keyboard for my Palm III, but am also interested in the software driver for my WinDoze system at work (and a Linux driver at home). That way, I can practice anywhere I happen to be, and can work with one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse. Thanks!
don't really need the hardware... http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~john/computer/hk/
Thank you for your reply :) I looked as closely as I could; but I couldn't see properly enough. I'll save it and use The Gimp to scale it up; I'll also visit your homepage.
;) So, could you use it fulltime? I'm not too worried about performance; that's a secondary factor for me. I'm mostly worried about space(which your keyboard is obviously good with), functionality(which seems to be full), and that nebulous "feel" which allows one to use it for long durations(which I'm not sure about) :)
But I'm still interested to know if *you* could use it on a day-to-day, fulltime basis. I'll take your work on the fact that it's functionally a full-sized keyboard(and I'll be able to tell for myself, shortly), but the company seems to be targeting handhelds and the like. I'm looking for a one-handed desktop keyboard replacement, and I'm not interested in five-buttoned chording keyboards
Thanks again,
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I would take its results with the appropriate seasoning.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Okay, try this: http://halfkeyboard.com/resources/hk4palm/800.jpg.
Yes, of course. People are buying it for that very purpose. In fact, we've pre-sold more HalfKeyboards for PCs than for Handspring PDAs.
No need to worry about the feel. It uses the same type of keyswitches found on IBM laptops. They are the best in the business, and higher quality than most desktop keyboards. It's a really nice keyboard.
Edgar
I've used several of them (when I wear one out I get a new one, usually because ash from cigarettes gets into the keyboard because I smoke by it) and I've never had problems. I love mine. What problems have you had with the key action? I've always loved it.
No, actually, at its inception (sometime in the 20's or 30's), QWERTY was designed to actually slow people down, to prevent jams and other mishaps that were associated with fast typing on one of those old typewriters. Notice that all but one vowel is located somewhere other than on the "home" keys, for example.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
What do you think I do every day?
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these products seem to solve the problems of the past, but they honestly seem VERY expensive. $399 for the two upsidedown bowl things... There has to be a more economical way.
The fact of learning a new way to type would also pose a problem, but not as big of one as the cost.
I had a class my freshman year in college w/a blind student. He had a small little computer that he used for taking notes. It was a CHORD Keyboard from what I remember, four keys and he could enter whatever he wanted (anyone know ever see these and could explain more would be nice). He said it took him only a few mins to learn and he oculd type fast as hell w/it. I thought that would be a better alternative than these but what do I know...
or maybe it was the job I had a few years ago that had a specialized keyboard where we were using our right pinkys for 50% of keystrokes. that sucked.
but anyway, my left hand can do anything, but my right hand aches after too long of anything, especially mousing.. sometimes I get a weird bruise on the top of my hand.
I've started doing mouse stuff with the left hand.. and i'm quite good at it, though sometimes, like with the gimp (a real *killer* app.. on my hand.. haha) it's much easier to use the left hand for modifier keys needed for certain clicks.
Anyway, the best thing I've done so far was getting a microsoft natural (for free, ok?).. the one with the half-sized F and cursor keys. They just feel really good to me.
but mostly, the whole cursor/10-key area is smaller so the mouse was not as far away as with my old keyboard. And all the keys in general are smaller so you don't have to do as much reacing.
(though the "windows" keys put the alt and ctrl in potentially harmful spots. oh well.)
a happy hacker would be even smaller and might be what I really need. sometimes I want to take hack-saw to keyboards to get rid of the useless 10-key
Personally I don't see any real benifit for either layout, and will use any keyboard that's available. For comfort I prefer the bent-layout keyboards like the Alps Wave I'm typing on now. (It came by default with a modified QWERTY arrangement.) The layout isn't much of a factor. Switching between keyboards is an easy skill to pick up.
I've given live demos at CeBIT using four keyboards -- UK, French, Belgian, and German -- and found that I didn't need to look at them after a few minutes of practice.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Very poor examples. Neither VHS nor Windows were first.
Beta was first. VHS followed; though its picture quality was technically inferior it was cheaper and allowed greater recording time.
Apple was first both with a marketable computer (the Apple II) and with a marketable GUI (the Mac OS) before IBM or Microsoft had anything comparable. PC architecture won because it was scaleable to more powerful CPU's at the object code level, and because a competetive market of "clone" makers drove prices down below what Apple was charging for comparable wares. (You could not clone Apple II's or Macs because Apple owned the firmware.) The Windows copycat GUI won over Apple's better thought-out plan because it ran on PC's.
OTOH QWERTY won simply because of inertia. It was first, and people were used to it. I type about 130 WPM and don't plan to change, either.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Mathias' new Palm Pilot oriented half-qwerty models appear to be left-handed only, but his original design worked just as well for people with only a right hand. The software version (which allows you to use a regular qwerty keyboard as if it was a half-qwerty) should do the trick for you quite nicely, although it does cost around $300. Check out halfkeyboard.com, as linked from the original post.
Although it doesn't have an integrated pointing device, you'd be no worse off than a two-handed person switching back and forth between a keyboard and a mouse.
As I said, the Windows and Mac versions are a little pricey for a pure software solution, but there's also an unofficial patch to the Linux kernel that does it for free (try a web search; I don't have the link offhand).
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
Playing with the applet, I noticed that it uses the right hand more then the left, which is not so great for us lefties. I'm afraid my poor right hand just couldn't handle the added stress. :)
the halfkeyboard people have some spiffy software that allows for typing with one hand on a normal keyboard (an extension of the demo software). It seems pretty easy to do, although I'm still just barely learning the language. This type of app would be really handy in chatting online situations when you have pizza in one hand and a particularly important convo on the other. I'm sure it could have some useful "shady" purposes when chatting online when one only has use of the left hand. anyways, anybody set up somthing for us singlehanded chatters on sourceforge?
moox. for a new generation.
So you do not have to guess any more about the possible key combinations let me explain how it works. You are correct for the first set of characters, numbers etc. 8 x 8 = 64. However if you push down on the left dome (just like you push down and hold the shift key) that puts you into a shift mode, so you have 64 additional combinations in shift mode. 64 + 64 (in shift mode) = 128 possible combinations. That would accommodate all of the characters, numbers, symbols, etc. For example the to type "1" you slide the left dome toward the northwest and the right dome toward the northeast. The shift of "1" is "!", so you push down on the left dome and slide it toward the northwest and slide the right dome toward the northeast and that types "!". Command keys such as CTRL and ALT are handled like a sticky key. For example to use "CTRL B" (bold in most applications), you would slide the domes for the "CTRL" character and then for the "B". For a complete Slide Guide please see http://www.keybowl.com/support/training.htm If you have any other questions let me know.
If you carefully read the article the first comment you make above is obviously false. The QWERTY keyboard WAS made to be inefficient, as the article suggests.
Further, given I've actually learned both, and got to 20 WPM on the DVORAK keyboard within two weeks, I can say that, yes, the DVORAK keyboard is somewhat more efficient. I had to stop using DVORAK on my machine at home because the dataprocessing center I worked in at the time had 8 different QWERTY keyboards available, which my DVORAK typing practice was making difficult to use.
The most damning problem with DVORAK is that it was optimized for english. All those non- english speakers will find the organisation to be less efficient, some very inefficient, no more so (or less so) than QWERTY. This is an unfixable problem, given over 100 human languages in common use in the world.
Can someone please do real science to decide the efficiencies of both keyboard and write a paper telling the world? Please!?!?!
Shannon, a disillusioned scientist.
A comment overheard in a corn field `If you have better ideas, lets hear them. I am all ears.'
> Let's see, 8 x 8 = 64. Actually, no, (9 x 9) - 1 = 80. You left out the possibilities were you only move one globe. Chris Mattern
I think at some subconsious level, my brain has become hard-wired to place a 'U' after a 'Q'. I also have this problem where I ran out of sugar. Without sugar, I couldn't have coffee. Without coffee, I couldn't go out to get sugar. So I booted up my computer and logged onto Slashdot. I suppose that was my first mistake...
I was typing speed was 120 wpm back in high school, I have graded tests to prove that :P My typing speed has always increased slightly every year.
Some keyboards trip me up, like compaq keyboards, they just feel a little more crowded, making my thumbs clash. Other keyboards assist my typing accuracy and speed like a those natrual keyboards from MS (unfortunately I havent found out who ms has to make the keyboards so I can get one without the ms name on it).
Speed isnt anything if you havent learned the keyboard well enough to never look at it, I have been fussing and cussing with computers since I was 8 years old (using the commadore64 back then).
My handwriting is so terrible, I can barely read it sometimes, I find it easier just to type notes up from time to time.. You should see my homedir on my linux box at home.. I have screenfuls of notes typed and stored away. When Im in my coding mood it's easier to pop open another terminal and blast away in pico or vi than it is to dig around in my desk for a pen and search out a notebook to write things down. (I would generally lose what I was thinking about)
I always find it charmingly funny when someone who doesnt know me very much watches me type and goes crazy saying "Stop that, you are typing too fast, I cant even read it before it scrolls away!"
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
Maybe it was because of the overtly political sig line.
War is necrophilia.
No, actually, at its inception (sometime in the 20's or 30's), QWERTY was designed to actually slow people down
ok, i know this one is a myth. QWERTY was designed to make typewriter jams happen infrequently. this wasn't done by slowing people down, but rather making peopl type adjacent letters on alternate hands (as i mentioned in my original post).
watch it when you type -- most words are spelled alternating back and forth. this was the primary method of keeping the keys from jamming. in most tests i've seen, QWERTY is arguably the same speed as a DVORAK keyboard, even though the latter is specifically designed to have often-used letters on the home row.
- j
Salon has a more balanced article, based on real life experience. The author's experience echoes my own:
- curiosity in a novel, intuitively appealing layout
- experimentation, which gets nowhere until I start using it on the job
- confusion, during which time I can type neither Sholes nor Dvorak
- breakthrough after about a month
I find it comfortable and intuitive. Despite years of practice with Sholes, I am slightly faster and more accurate with Dvorak. It is superior. However, if you're not committed to give it an honest effort for a month or so, you will be disappointed. I'm not a Dvorak evangelist, just a satisfied convert.The QWERTY keyboard was not designed for inefficiency... Where in any of the links (i.e. urbanlegends and the 2 from there) that you provide is there evidence against this claim?
I have started using the Twiddler while riding my recumbent bike. It is still slower for me than QWERTY, but I can easily type without looking and by using a single hand. I will use this to type during boring sections of my ride across the US, May-July 2002.
The Twiddler has to be much easier to learn than the wierd pair of typing spheres in this article.
so, how does it work? are the { and } under the index fingers?
I have a friend in College right now, and she has an undiagnosed disease(the doctors she's seen have no idea what it is... imagine advanced arthritis), which causes her tendons to tighten after 10-20 minutes of typing. This means that she has been forced to use voice recognition software to type the papers due, and as a History and Lakotah (Native American Language, FYI) double major, she has a lot of typing to do, yet she can't get her voice recognition to type in Lakotah.
does anyone out there know of any good, cheap keyboards like above, or any organizations founded to help out struggling college students in need of help like this? because there is no diagnosis, she is not qualified as "disabled", so she can't get help like that
Me, I want MEMS accelerometers embedded in my fingertips so I can just wiggle my fingers and have text appear on the screen...
I got the chance to use the datahands once. Not bad at all. Took some getting used to, but a touch typist would have little problems at all. Each finger has an up, right, left, down and push in "key" that woudl correspond to the direction you'd go in to create the keystroke as a touch typist. For example, push in on the right index finger is j, left is h, etc...not bad if you are a touch typist.
;)
Of course, I am not
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
But I quickly ran into a problem. The problem was keyboard shortcuts.
If you look at them they are chosen for the QWERTY keyboard.
Undo ZCut X
Copy C
Paste X
Select All A
Find F
Quit Q
Close W
This is for the mac but most of these are similar on windows.
Of course on DVORAK these keys are all over the place.
So if you wanted to make a "better" keyboard layout you would have to take this into account.
I thought I might make a custom keyboard taking this into account. Of course this would take a lot of effort. And I am not a programmer and that does not help
The QWERTY keyboard was not designed for inefficiency, and the Dvorak keyboard is not clearly superior.
The myth of the Dvorak keyboard will probably outlive us all, but ya gotta keep trying.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The reality is that most of us don't work at the same computer all the time. (I have at least 5 computers that I work with.) I expect that it takes installing some sort of interface to make it work. So, I'd have to either drag around a keyboard wherever I go, or install 5 of these puppies. Plus, it still wouldn't help when I used the laptop.
Also, as someone who has done the Dvorak keyboard game in college, switching back and forth is a pain.
So, nothing for me. I'm still waiting for the dataglove that I can just wear & it'll wirelessly interface with whatever computer I'm using.
Thalia
You will find the gentleman's website here:
http://www.microship.com/
The keyboard he used was binary. That's right, he typed in a binary code for each character. Convienient while bicycling, but not necessarily useful in a normal enviroment. Typing SPEED was virtually irelevant.
Hey Folks,
I'm the inventor of the Half Keyboard. Feel free to post any questions...
Edgar
Not everyone responds identically to every physical activity. What injures one person might not even bother another. Why not consider yourself lucky instead of berating people who suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome?
If people would just use some sense when they are typing, we wouldn't need to waste development money on designing new keyboards.
And just what is "common sense" that these people are not using? Maybe you feel that people who work in data entry jobs should just quit or take more breaks than they are allowed?
At this point they are just fine.
No, the one-size-fits-all keyboards are not "fine." If they were, people would not be getting carpal tunnel syndrome from them, would they?
Noone ever got carpal tunnel from using a typewriter.
You are right. We developed carpal tunnels in the womb. Carpal tunnel syndrome was a term first used in the 1930's to describe an entrapment neuropathy of the median nerve at the wrist. The first open carpal tunnel release surgical procedure was described in 1947. Do you think that those people got it from computers?
Some of these new keyboards and other accessories are designed for companies to avoid RSI lawsuits. One company I was at hired a database developer who developed severe RSI problems in both wrists, and so had to buy him a chair customized to his body with split keyboard mounts and a couple of other spiffy things. The company shelled out more than $5000 for it and then had to let the employee take it with him when he left (because of the custom fitting), so in comparison, a few hundred to a thousand dollars to avoid it at the first symptoms is a real bargain.
Incidentally, I once had a temporary case of RSI. Shortly after I got my first cablemodem about three years ago, I was stuck on Quake 2 CTF, and played for as much as 18 hours in a day. After about three weeks, I noticed some pain in my wrists, and actually had to stop playing and do some exercises. The pain went away after about two weeks, and I was able to resume playing, but it did force me to move my arms around the keyboard when I need to reach instead of pivoting my wrists, and to learn to use my fingertips more for mouse control instead of, again, my wrist. The upshot of the change in mouse control is that the accuracy of my railgun snapshots increased dramatically.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Thalia
IF you have the patience and attention span for it, the new mavis baecon teaches typing has dvorak settings. Or you could learn it my way... Chat rooms
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
What I'm really wishing for is a physical version of the FITALY keyboard (http://www.fitaly.com). The original is mostly a software construct for Palms and other handhelds because typing with one hand/finger/stylus is a whole different environment than the usual style.
... my hatchday is in April. :)
Unfortunately, due to some physical limitations, I've been typing with just a knuckle on my right hand since kindergarten. Even though I can hit about 28wpm when I'm in a good groove on a nice keyboard, I'd really rather own a Fitaly; the layout looks wonderful, and with toggling shift/ctrl/alt (which I achieve through software now), it'd be glorious.
Anyone with the urge to build one for me
-- Riding the Winds of Fires Lit in Ancient Days
One day I hope you know how it feels.
Wireless and wearable and responsive to natural motions of each finger - that looks to me like the only thing sufficiently better than QWERTY keyboards to actually get people to switch. So has anybody tried putting this together with Bluetooth (or is there another wireless protocol that would work)?
Energy: time to change the picture.
Yes, I know that sticky keys are a common outcome of typing one-handed (someone would make the joke sooner or later, might as well get it over with).
But seriously--Can the half-keyboard do "sticky keys" (i.e. the ability to hit a modifier button like shift, alt, etc just once, depress the key, and then be able to another key to get a single modified character) in hardware? Or does it rely on the good graces of whatever OS it's running under to support support sticky keys? If someone needs to operate the half-keyboard with just one finger and they had no OS sticky key support, this would be an important feature.
I've been to their offices in Phoenix, I have one of their keyboards. The mouse is cumbersome to use (read: slow), and I don't think it's worth nearly what it's priced at... They say that their next product will be something in an affordable price range, so watch them for future developments.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Interesting that you said that. Years ago I saw some info on an early prototype of the Datahand; in this particular incarnation, each handpad acted as a mouse -- one for coarse control, the other fine (like a vernier). You had to move your hands around...
Of course, it's not clear that they're worse off for having dropped that idea. :)
---
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
I did software development almost exclusively using the DataHand for 2-3 years before it started breaking down on me (whereupon I went out and bought the much cheaper Kinesis Ergo to replace it).
The DataHand took a couple of weeks to get full proficiency on, but once I did, I had no problem using it at rapid speeds. Software development on it using XEmacs posed no problems, and it was less painful than using a flat keyboard for me.
However, after years of using it, I can say that it is not a magic bullet. The lateral forces you have to use with it, especially with your pinkies, can be more than a bit stressful. In addition, the whole design is intended to reduce movement in your hands and fingers. That's fine in theory, but in practice, reducing the major motions of the hands and arms also reduces blood flow, and as a diabetic, this was not doing me any major favors.
The Kinesis is a bit better than a flat, and a whole lot cheaper than the DataHand, and it has the advantage of programmable macro keys, so I would recommend that someone try it before paying $1000 or so for the DataHand.
For me, though, what helped most was taking Yoga classes regularly for a year. All the parts of the body are connected, and Yoga helps provide the strength, flexibility, and increased blood circulation to help the body withstand the rigors of sitting in a chair all day.
Great for posture, as well, which *REALLY* does make a difference. One of the problems I had was thoracic outlet syndrome, where the thoracic nerves in my neck and shoulders were getting compressed from my terrible slouching.
The take-away message here is that RSI is a very holistic (whole-body) kind of thing, and the very best way to take care of it is to take care of your whole body. These keyboards can help, but addressing one ergonomic factor in isolation can lead to other problems.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Oh, you're making it so complicated!
Rather than think about what you want to type, wiggle your fingers, sense that movement, interpret that movement, send the data somewhere, pick it up somewhere else... just tap right into your brain and use that data in the first place! Leave the meat out of it... :)
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
The key sticking issue is not an "urban myth". It was designed with a two-fold purpose by Remmington in the late 1800's.
/any/ exposure to a QWERTY keyboard), people were able to type about 40% faster.
Firstly, it was designed to reduce key-sticking (which we've already discussed). Secondly, it was designed so that the salespeople could demonstrate it's use without actually needing to know how to type. Thus "typewriter" can be written using only the first row.
Actually, I did a science fair project, a few years ago (when I was in high school... It went to internationals, but anyways). It invloved producing a keyboard layout that had the most commonly used letters immediately below the fingers (I suppose it probably would be less effective for non-english speakers... but that's another issue). In comparisons with randomly laid out keyboards (it's hard to find adults without
Additionally the layout place commonly used digraphs (double letter combos) in easy to reach places (ie "th" is a mere finger roll, etc). While I'm not saying that my keyboard was the be-all-end-all, the results were conclusive enough to prove that "non-QWERTY" layouts may provide a faster alternative.
-Andy
The Dvorak keyboard study was a hoax. There are no advantages to the Dvorak keyboard.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I have to agree that a major sticky point is that many programs have the standard shortcuts (c-Z, c-X, c-C, c-V, etc.) hard coded into them. However just use Emacs for everything and you won't have any problems. (You can remap all the controls to whatever you want.)
Oh, and you can't forget the *real* reason to switch: the Geek Factor :) (I'm using a Dvorty board so they can switch it back to Qwerty with the press of a key.)
Often times people will start using my computer and then realize that what they're typing isn't what's appearing on the screen. Then they look down at the keyboard and realize how much of a geek I am.
Is it just me, or was everyone's immediate reaction something like "Keybowl? Surely they mean Keyboobs."
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Half-QWERTY, of course, is useful if, for one reason or another, you need to type one-handed.
Yeah, instead of carpal tunnel sydrome, you'll have tennis elbow or a broken arm. What wonderful improvements on keyboards *GRIN*
Eh...
I ran into a SIMILAR problem. I learned to play the guitar in Drop-D tuning. All my friends learned to play in standard(open-c or something like that) tuning. If I went toplay at my friends place, I had to re tune the guitar and it was all awkerd. I got used to it though.
I ran into EXACTLY the same problem as you did last semester. Got bored one night and switched the keyboard over to Dvorak. Learned it over a 2 week span. Got a job, sat down at a qwerty keyboard.
Oh well, I learned to type both.
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
Yeah..its called the Twiddler. Made by HandyKey.
We plan to release a right-hand model for lefties as well (in 2001).
Edgar
I've seen people who have changed to a different keyboard layout altogether DVORAK or whatever it's called, it takes them ages to get used to it and then when they have to use a QWERTY keyboard then they're typing speed goes downhill as they've got used to the new layout.
Know one keyboard layout and know it well, unfortunately that means we're stuck with QWERTY for the most part.
Win cash with online games - a good test of Java support and plugins under Mozilla :)
I've actually seen something extremely similar to this on the Discovery Channel about 4 years ago. It was about this biker who pedaled across the US with a computer on the back "seat".
Solar cells (which I believe he could extend when we wasn't on the road for larger power generation) powered the computer and he actually typed while riding because he had a similar type of keyboard in each hand.
I've been wanting to see such a thing for a long time, and this could be the same company.
Flavio
wtf does a QWERTY keyboard have to with an operating system?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What about the happy hacker keyboard? I know it is not realy that different than a regular keyboard but it does have some differences. I think it should have been reviewed, it is an excellent alternative to a regular sized keyboard. It is also excellent for small rack mounted areas.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
Why, with a non-standard keyboard, of course... and of course, U usually follows Q.
all of these new-fangled keyboards always put a note about how users can "acheive 90% of their orginal typing speed," or something like it. i know that the idea behind these designs is to reduce strain on the hands and wrists, but when is somebody going to come out with a keyboard that can increase my typing speed?
QWERTY is designed for fast typing (most words are back and forth, left right left right), but it's certainly not ideal. does anybody know of a keyboard could let me type faster. i already type at about 100wpm, but anything that could help me type even faster (perhaps by reducing the error rate at high speeds) would be great.
i would be willing to hook electrodes up to my skull to achieve this too ;)
- j
But now that keyboards aren't intended mainly for those mechanical typewriters who would jam up and computer response time is in milliseconds can't we switch to a abcdef... format? Even if it is just for a few of us wierdos? QWERTY is nice, don't get me wrong, how else could I hax0r pa55w0rds so fast if everybody didn't use that damn keyboard acronym?
Aha. The coffee problem. I know that one. Makes perfect sense, now. :-)
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
None of this is about being faster or more productive. None of the manufactureres even claim that you will reach your full previous typing speed - the bowl lets you get to about 50%.
These are all about reducing finger movement and strain. These were designed to help prevent RSI/carpal tunnel syndrome or offer relief to sufferes of it.
All this is stated in the article. People, please read them. Moderators included. It should somehow be a requirement that a moderator reads the article before modding replies.
i only have one hand, my right one, i need a good keyboard and pointing device, any body got any good ideas? it would be cool if it was all one unit.
and even cooler if it was less than $500
...but they changed the arrow keys from fullsize keys in an inverted T (normal modern arrangement) to a diamond of half-wit(dth) keys, rendering them unusable without looking at them. If they had done this to narrow the keyboard, I might have understood (but still disagreed), but they crippled the usability by narrowing the keys, but didn't (significantly) narrow the keyboard itself.
They also gave the keys a MUCH nicer feel, IMHO. So, if you want the MS Natural these days, you'll get a better key feel and nearly unusable special keys, with almost the same my-shoulder-hurts-from-reaching-for-the-mouse extra width as before.
Sheesh...
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I like the half-keyboard idea of freeing up my other hand for mousing, writing, etc, but I'm not willing to give up my full size keyboard. It does make me seriously consider writing a quick keyboard driver that would let my normal keyboard function like the half-keyboard.
One question, though... how do you make a backslash with that thing?
Make up for any health or comfort advantages with very steep learning curve and lack of intuitiveness due to the fact we're all so used to QWERTY.
Not nearly used widely enough to be useful. Most people use a variety of different machines, and nearly everyone uses a computer that is not theirs often. Yours would be the only one that uses the special interface, meaning you would have to be truly used to both, severely decreasing your ability in both.
Clearly, while a new interface may be better for health and comfort, it is far outweighed by the difficulties associated. Maybe someday we'll all use better intefaces, but for the near future, QWERTY is so widely used that it would be difficult to use something so dramatically different.
I find it both amusing and revealing that the first comments moderated up on the subject of attempts to improve the way that we interact with our computers were negative and supportive of the status quo.
You'd think that /.ers would be more open to attempts at making things easier rather than supporting a technology that is over one hundred years old. Let's hear it for tradition over efficiency!
No, High times is a magazine about canabis.
I'm the inventor of the Internet. Feel free to post any questions...
Al
One thing I noticed at the keybowl web-site was the lack of information about special keystrokes.
They have a nice little program that converts text into the movements that should be made with their keylessboard, but it doesn't even handle capitalization. The 'traditional' approach of holding one key, while hitting an other is heavily used by many users, and how this exactly is handled is unclear.
I think people use keyboards differently, and the a through z keys are only part of the equation.
As a side note, I've never understood why M$ decided to re-layout the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PG-UP/DWN island from 3x2 to 2x3 on their second version of the natural keyboard. Are they insane? (oh right, never mind..) I use them all the time and its unbelievable how annoying such a small change can be. Fortunately they changed them back on the NK Pro.
Breace.
There are a lot of different operating systems out there now (several flavours of Windows, Linux, MacOS, BeOS, etc.). Rather than try to write drivers for all of them (or only the popular ones), we thought the path of least resistance was to go the hardware gadget route and thereby support all operating systems.
We are starting with the PDA market and will be moving to the desktop with PC and USB HalfKeyboards.
Edgar
I'm intrigued with the Half Keyboard appliance.
How does this integrate with the rest of a computer system? I've seen things in the past that are basically a keyboard+screen+memory so you can take notes on the go, and then use the device as a normal keyboard (PS/2 Port connected) on your home machine - hit a key combination and it dumps it's buffer across the keyboard interface. Is this what the appliance will be, or will it be closer to a PDA?
What OS is used on the appliance? Expansion / peripheral port details? Expected price? Is it intended to be wearable (or will there be a wearable version) ?
Also, do you intend to support other PDA's other than Palm OS devices with the Half Keyboard?
Thanks,
BBK
The two 8 position joysticks and me did not work. With the keybowl, I would be lucky to get to 5% much less 50% of my typing speed.
...what us hackers really need is not a keyboard that allows fast typing of text in any spoken language. I can do alright with that on a standard qwerty (uh, qwertz where i come from) keyboard. But everyone who ever coded and used a powerful editor such as emacs needs a completely different key layout... especially in the german layout where the pipe symbol is <altgr>+"<", the @ is at <altgr>+"q", and the backslash at <altgr>+"ß", and <altgr> definitely being one of the keys that won't work with touch typing. And typing things like
void main(int argc, char ** argv) {int c = some_func_here (argv[0]);
printf ("Result: \n", c);
}
M-x M-s M-x M-c
is what's really killing your fingers on a standard qwerty keyboard. The datahand idea is maybe not too bad. but I'd rather be able to move my hands around freely while having the "keyboards" strapped to my hands, and the whole thing working wireless of course - and optimized for coding. For the good ol' letter I'll stick with qwerty.
Personally, I find qwerty keyboards to hamper my typing skills. The keyboard itself doesn't lend itself to fast typing. In fact, my left hand does 56% of the typing, or so I have heard. I just can't stand the way the keyboard is set up. The DVORAK keyboard is slightly better in my opinion, but I haven't used them enough to tell for sure. I am really looking into getting this keybowl keyboard....the weirdest one I saw was in Time Digital this week. (i think) and it had all the keys depressed down into it so that that you can type normally with your hands in perfect position. All of the keys are sort of depressed into a big dip in the keyboard. It looks pretty neat and i think I could get the hang of it. I don't think the price is an issue though...the way I see it, if I spend even 100$ on a keyboard, it could possibly save my wrists for the rest of my life. Carpal Tunnel isn't fun.
The anti-salmon
I can't believe the world would be a happier place if people did what was superior, over what is standard.
It would be nice, I guess, to always do what was superior; but that would just become and define what is standard!
Now if people would only start to be happier, then the world would be a much happier place, IMHO ^^
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
It's desired goal, helping people with carpal tunnel, doesn't look like it's very effective. Woulnd't one just end up with strained wrists in the long run?
The Half a keyboard also seems to be pretty lame... It'll take twice as long to type anything, and you still have to type on the damned thing. It's not convienient enough for anyone to feel the need to learn a new system.
The DataHand looks like the best of the bunch. 4 crosses, each of them quite small, provide plenty of ease of use, but the major issue I have with it is that there's only room for 20 characters on there. Anyone using a Roman Alphabet will soon find that to be pretty inconvienient, and there doesn't seem to be anything in the article showing how the missing letters/numbers are retrieved.
In short, it looks like there's going to be a few new standards on the horizon that will be rejected out of hand by the consumer. It looks like they may have a bit of potential, but it's too much of a pain in the ass to ask Joe Six-Pack to adopt yet another standard.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
To relive stress I mean... if these haven't been released yet is there any proof that they actually remove stress from your hands/fingers/wrist etc? Maybe short term, but long term studies? Luckily for me I don't have problems with typing yet..
No sig for you.
Of course on DVORAK these keys are all over the place.
Right! Quite unlike the QWERTY keyboard, where all the keys are layed out in a sensible,
non-random fashion.
(If you can memorize where keys are on QWERTY, you can do it on DVORAK.)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I had pretty good luck with a Kinesis contoured keyboard. After the initial (about one week) adaptation period I regained my original typing speed, and after a couple more weeks I'm typing much faster than before (and wrist pain is gone!). They also provide some very handy training/adaptation exercises.
The problem is that the prices start at $200+ :(
PS: I'm not affiliated in any way with Kinesis... just being a happy user :)
Petru
Here is an article by two economists that rather thoroughly demolishes the claimed superiority of Dvorak
And here is a page addressing the myths your source has perpetuated.
I find it hard to believe that people are so stubborn about admitting these things. A little commmon sense and a simple look at a DVORAK keyboard shows that it would be easier to type on once you've learned it. For crying out loud -- all of the vowels are kept in the under one hand in the home row!
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I dunno, typing with my hands on two round objects sounds interesting....
Damn
all those scrabble games I coulda won...
--
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Yes, it will do all those characters. If you look carefully at the picture, you can see them. The HalfKeyboard is functionally equivalent to a full-sized keyboard.
Edgar
The first article, despite being very lengthy, doesn't appear to acually say anything. It goes into great detail about how QUERTY is the evolutionary survivor of nineteenth century typewriters... which in the Dvorak argument is completely meaningless. The Dvorak myth is that QUERTY is superior for manual typewriters.
I had to skim a few drawn out repeating paragraphs, but I couldn't find anything which actually stated why QUERTY was infact created, only that there was lots of evidence that Dvorak himself spread the rumour that his patented keyboard was better.
The author also does a horrid job trying to shoot down the lock-in argument using the DOS/Windows analogy. CP/M is source compatible with DOS 1.0, and almost all DOS apps run under modern versions of Windows. The whole failure of OS/2 was centred around Windows compatability and the market forces associated with promoting the competition's platform.
He does appear to enjoy shooting down lots of sources which people believe credible... moreso than he appeared to be interested in the merits and faults of the various keyboards. But he does have some interesting points.
From what the article claims, I think your asessment is accurate: "Mostly an urban myth popularized by Dvorak." But he doesn't do squat to actually refute the argument, only to refute its historical accuracy.
With the mentioning of the new "weird" keyboards I think it is good to mention the Velopetype. Its concept is more than only hardware. The strength is its software! You do not type single letters but whole syllables. They claim high typing speeds and reduced RSI risk.
The best portable keyboard will be, for many reasons, FREE. As in patent free, license free, royalty free, etc.
As soon as someone makes this keyboard, even if it is just mediocre (ie. QWERTY-like) it will catch on.
A few years ago, I tried getting used to the dvorak keyboard layout. I converted my keyboard, I did their excercises, I regained about 70% of my typing speed.
But the problem was, sitting at another computer and going to a qwerty layout. And then going to work and sitting down at the qwerty layout.
I never got to see if I could really improve my typing speed because My mind didn't play well with typing on two different formats. I type with instinct on the qwerty layout and never consciously think of where the keys are, this is from years of typing. I don't think I could get used to anything else, especially since I use about 30 different workstations at work, I don't think they'd let me switch to a new keyboard format on all of them......
Let's see, 8 x 8 = 64. I guess it's possible to do everything with that number, but how do you capitalize a letter if it takes two hands just to type a letter. Do you shift by banging your head on something, or is that another movement of the hands (i.e. shift then letter.)
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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
And yet, they are a standard around the world because everyone uses them. This is exactly the same difficulty that Linux faces viv-a-vis Windows.
If you're complaining about Windows being a standard because everyone uses it, then you don't grasp the concept of a standard. The QWERTY-all-in-a-straight-row may be a standard, but that doesn't stop me from using a different one. Just because my neighbors run Windows doesn't stop me from using Linux, either.
If the entire planet ran Linux, would that make you feel better about using it? Why? Is achieving the "standard" label that important to you?
I don't choose my keyboard to be different - I choose it because it's what I want to use. I don't care who else is using it. I don't choose my OS to be different, either - I choose the one I want to use to get my job done. It doesn't matter to me whether you're running the same OS as I am, or whether mine is a standard. It's the one I want to use, that's all. Same with my keyboard.
What's your damage, Heather?