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?

Comments

Re:The Keyboard market is a good example...

[FFFish]

Out of morbid curiousity, I must ask... how did you mistype "QWERTY" as "QUERTY"?!?!


--

I can just see the keybowl....

[kenthorvath]

... being advertised in the next issue of high times.

sorry, these are all popular MYTHS...

[Preposterous Coward]

...or, some would argue in the case of the Dvorak keyboard, hoaxes. Business schools that are still using any of these examples are, unfortunately, promulgating misinformation. The "I use it becaue everybody else does" argument is based on a phenomenon known as "network effects" (i.e., as the network of users of a technology grows, the value of the technology typically grows on the order of n^2 rather than linearly with n, fax machines being the traditional example). The supposed first-mover-but-inferior-technology advantage is described as "path dependence".

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:

In the first phase of Strong's experiment ten government typists were retrained on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over twenty-five days of four-hour-a-day training for these typists to catch up to their old Qwerty speed. (Compare this to the claim David makes about the Navy study's results that the full retraining costs were recovered in ten days.) When the typists had finally caught up to their old speed Strong began the second phase of the experiment. The newly trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of ten Qwerty typists began a parallel program to improve their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less quickly with further Dvorak training than did Qwerty typists training on Qwerty keyboards.

Strong's study does leave some questions unanswered. Because it uses experienced typists it cannot tell us whether beginning Dvorak typists could be trained more quickly than beginning Qwerty typists.

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:

He cites a 1973 study based on six typists at Western Electric where after 104 hours of training on DSK, typists were 2.6 percent faster than they had been on Qwerty. Similarly Yamada reports that in a 1978 study at Oregon State University after 100 hours of training typists were up to 97.6 percent of their old Qwerty speed.

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.

Before it gets started yet again...

[Reality Master 101]

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.

--

Half Keyboard inventor reads /.

[Matias]

Hey Folks,

I'm the inventor of the Half Keyboard. Feel free to post any questions...

Edgar

Re:typing speed

[whydna]

The key sticking issue is not an "urban myth". It was designed with a two-fold purpose by Remmington in the late 1800's.

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 /any/ exposure to a QWERTY keyboard), people were able to type about 40% faster.

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

buyer beware

[q000921]

Whether these keyboards have any benefit when it comes to preventing RSI remains to be seen; they still require repetitive fine motor control and may simply transfer the problem from one area to another.

Half-QWERTY, of course, is useful if, for one reason or another, you need to type one-handed.

It's what you're used to

[linuxci]

Personally I believe you're more productive with what you're used to. I still use a normal size qwerty keyboard and am perfectly happy. I once used a MS Natural Keyboard and I just couldn't get used it it. Some people find these more useful, I suppose it depends on how used to these keyboards you are.

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 :)

typing speed

[iso]

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

Re:typing speed

[Voline]

Yeah, the US Navy did experiments in the '20s or '30s with the DVORAK keyboard. Once typists learned the new layout, they were faster than they were with the QWERTY keyboard.

Actually the QWERTY was not laid out with speed in mind. In a manual typewriter (and I used one for the first 3 years of my college career), if two keys that are next to each other are pressed in very rapid succession they will stick together at the top of their arc and jam the typewriter. So, the guy who invented QWERTY moved the keys for the most common letters in the alphabet away from each other. Look at the position of the 'e' and the 'o' keys.

Technology soon made this unnecessary, but by then the QWERTY had become standard. And then one runs into the I-use-the-one-that-everyone-uses-because-everyone- uses-it circular problem, In business schools QWERTY is used as the classic example of the first, not the best winning in market economies. Other popular examples are VHS over Beta are Windows over Macintosh (or Amiga).

DVORAK uses the traditional physical keyboard, but the placement of the letters is different. So, you can find programs that will switch the keyboard that you are using to DVORAK. Macintoshes come with the option built-in.

Re:Internet inventor reads /.

[Matias]

1. I'm the inventor of the Internet. Feel free to post any questions...

How does your wife feel about all the porn your creation has spawned?

Also, is she a real blond?(if you know what I mean)

Edgar