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Ergonomic Laptop Keyboards?
"To that end, I wonder if any laptop makers (perhaps catering to those with wrist difficulties like I am on the edge of) offer laptops with keyboards somewhat like those on the MS Natural, or the old Apple Ergonomic keyboard, that is, with some degree of split for better wrist angle. In fact, in cramped places, it would be really handy even for those with fine wrists, to be able to angle in somewhat more -- on my last airline flight I realized that there is somewhat more elbow room than straight-forward room, at least in the cheap seats.
Ideal, perhaps, would be something like the Kinesis keyboard but simply integrated into a laptop -- it might be a little thicker, but the change would be a boon for certain of us.
Hope your Slashdot readers have some suggestions on this front. Even a small "ergo" keyboard along the lines / size of the famous Happy Hacker keyboard would be ok, at least for moderately long trips ..."
One problem with this is that hands and preferences vary so greatly; does anyone have recommendations on comfortable laptop keyboards, by brand or model? For now, I carry an IBM external keyboard in my car.
A curious side topic is ergonamic mice. Lots of companies put a lot of effort into making nice-feeling keyboard. Lots of companies put a lot of effort into making comfortable shaped mice. I have never in my life seen a mouse where the buttons have any aftertouch, let alone a healthy feel.
Note on terminology: The term "aftertouch" comes from piano keyboards. It refers to a key moving some distance, activating, but then still having some distance to move, so your fingers don't hit a solid surface at the bottom.
that's 275$ not 175$
Not quite. You can get them for $189 here (sure, it's not "$175", but it's far from "$275").
Alex Bischoff
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
*smirk* But he mentioned dvorak. Maybe that's the record for that over-rated and over-hyped monstrosity
hawk
> used in English are ETAIONSHRDLU - in decreasing order of frequency, a
> quick perusal of the QWERTY keyboard reveals that these aren't 'as far
> frm one another as possible' after all.
No, it doesn't show that. The keys are in columns, and the first time
that any of the letters you list appear in a previoiusly used column is H
. . . this means a minimum of three other bars between any pair
of most commonly used keys.
Besides, as pointed out elsewhere, it's the frequency of pairs, not
of the raw letters, that matters.
When I used to do 100wpm on a manual, I could have gone faster, but
had to slow down over the collisions.
While I'm meandering, Mark Twain was the first author to submit a
manuscript by typewriter.
hawk
btw, who was the low-wattage, humor impaired fool who modded down the
rural legends post? That was one of the funniest things I ever
saw on slashdot (and has a good chance of *becoming* an urban legend . .
Final twist: there should be a meta-moderation rating of "funny"--to cover
the case that the moderation is so clueless that it evokes laughter . . .
OK, it turns out they should have included a spare cover for those contacts on the top of the screen housing, and fastened the lower pcmcia eject button properly, but what the heck . . .
hawk
Interesting to see the inventor won an award (near the bottom), yet none of their new laptops seem to offer that folding keyboard. Apparently named TrackWrite, but it seems to me they just called it the ThinkPad folding keyboard...?
While many laptop makers put fold-up 'feet' on their 'books, a (used) Compaq Armada I just bought has a very novel solution for the issue of key travel:
The notebook in question is the Armada 7380DMT. The key travel issue is solved bu having keys that have as much travel as a desktop keyboard, which places the keytops 4-5mm above the deck of that laptop. This would interfere with the screen closing under normal circumstances -- compaq solves this by a pully system in the screen cam mechanism that relaxes the springs in the keyboard as the screen closes. They fall down lower than the deck and don't impact the screen, and when it is opened, they pop up and give you full travel.
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Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
WRT mechanical typewriters and ae, rt, io, etc, if you type on a mechanical typewriter, you'll see that it's actually quite hard to type two keys with adjacent fingers of the same hand in quick succession. One would have to take a close look at a very old mechanical typewriter, or maybe read the patent application, to figure out why QWERTY was chosen.
The nice lucite apple keyboards seem to be highly susceptible to key swapping, as is the keyboard on the Apple Titanium. I haven't tried swapping the keys on my Sony VAIO yet.
As I run Linux exclusively on my machines, as I was shopping for a laptop I was in the market for hardware.. not platform. I looked around at all the machines... even apple.
:)
It eventually came down between a Sony Vaio, a Compaq 1700, and the Apple PowerBook Pismo. The greatest deciding factor was that it had the best laptop keyboard i've ever seen.. infact, after using the keyboard for several months and using my friend's Compaq 1700... I was so glad that I had gotten my powerbook.
Sorry to sound a like a commercial, but it really is the best IMHO; and you get firewire
It is also great to have a PowerPC chip... good to get experience with other architectures.. although this can be a pain at times (some stuff doesnt run, usually due to endianess)
If you don't need windows and care about your hands, i'd say go for it.
See this page for a buckling spring keyboard, like the original IBM PC keyboards. They used to sell the IBM 42H1292 keyboard, but it appears that they finally exhausted the stock on that model.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Interesting, I've never done such a test, so I just did. Started my timer, and started pounding:
;) - but still. Also, I type in norwegian - I don't know if the mean norwegian word is shorter than the mean english word. If it is, that may explain why I managed to rack the speed to 149wpm. :-)
:-)
After one minute had passed:
arcade@lux:~$ wc endaentest
4 149 745 endaentest
Of course, there were some typing errors, and the formatting sucked (4 lines
Also, note that in that, there was absolutely _NO SENSE_ in what I wrote. Of course, it was words, and they were in sentences - but I didn't type something very interesting.
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"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
The Kinesis Ergo Contour Classic is the best keyboard I've ever found. For $175, you get full hardware level remap and macro, an intelligently arranged keyboard (that looks science fiction; it has 12 thumb keys), with an overall contour shaped for the range of motion of your hands. I got mine on a doctor's recomendation and have loved it ever since.
I was just thinking about this about 2 days ago when my wrists hurt from typing on my laptop for about 30 minutes. It wouldn't be hard for manufacturers to mount the keys on a thin, but stiff metal surface, split it down the middle, and anchor each half under the 6 and 7 keys. That way, you could pull out the bottom corners to make your wrists sit at a more natural angle when typing. I give anyone permission to use my above idea, so long as they don't patent it. :) And if they wanna give me some cash for it, I'll gladly take it.
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I'm assuming this is a typo, because 130 wpm would be something along the lines of just slamming your open palm on the keyboard over and over. The fastest typist in the world hits 138 WPM, and that's on a Dvorak keyboard.
As for the rest of your post: hear, hear! I totally agree.
Cheers,
levine
Actually, the Titanium PowerBook G4 is its own heatsink. There's a heat pipe connecting the CPU to the titanium shell. For those not in the know, a heat pipe works through the evaporation and condensation of an internal fluid. The fluid evaporates at the hot end, condenses at the cold end, and is drawn back by capilliary action to the hot end. The result is a pipe with an effective thermal conductivity much, much higher than copper (which is pretty damn good to begin with).
The PowerBook G4 does have a fan, but it almost never comes on in normal use (or so I'm told--I'm still drooling over one, and I'm waiting for the revised model due out in July).
Of course, that's all off-topic. To bring it back on topic, you might want to take a look at the PB G4 keyboard, which is semi-flexible, and held rigid to the frame via a few magnets. Very nice engineering.
Well maybe but...
It's virtually impossible to try every keyboard on the market to see which one fits you. Just a few seconds banging on the key in a store will not tell you anything. You have to live with the keyboard for a day to two at least to know weather it fits you or not. So what are you supposed to do.
Hey I have an idea. Why not ask a few thousand people which use keyboards heavily and see if there is a consensus.
Let's see now... Where can I find a few thousand people who use keyboards heavily.
War is necrophilia.
If you look at the message subjects, you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.
We're all built differently.
There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.
Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.
If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.
However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your significant other a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!
Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block (or after a wild hour of Counterstrike *grin*)
If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.
All that being said - aren't laptops supposed to be the mobile solution for people? If you're really looking for a longterm solution because you do a lot of typing on a laptop, wouldn't a docking station and a regular egronomic keyboard be better for you?
I've been using computers since I was six, and my useage has been constant since I was eighteen. For most of my life, it was the standard extened keyboard with a dozen F keys, a number pad and so forth. Then I bought an iMac, which made use of what was, essentially, an extended laptop keyboard- same set as a laptop with the number pad tacked on. It was tiny- took a bit of time to get used to.
Then I bought a powerbook 520, for writing. Same keyboard, less the number pad. A short while later I hooked into a Powerbook G3 (firewire)- which had much 'shallower' keys, and was is a real dream to use. Combine the small profile of laptop keyboards with the close proximity of the pointing device - in this case, a trackpad less than an inch below the spacebar- and your hand motions have completely minimized.
I'm in an environment that utilizes almost every known input method- a mix od laptop, standard and extended keyboards, a trackball, mice, and a WACOM tablet. With the sole exeption of the laptop, every single combination has induced a good deal of strain, with the MOST strain coming from - you guessed it- the standard extended keyboard and mouse setup that almost 95% of the computer using world uses.
I'm to the point where my laptop, while not the most powerful machine that I use, and by no means having the most disk space, is my primary system: it's the easiest to interface with, particularly when you consider the fact that an LCD is a lot easier on your eyes than a CRT, particularly when you're using your system in excess of three hours at a time.
The butterfly keyboard from the old IBM Thinkpads was nice. Fullsize, nice layout.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
On the other hand my boss has just got me an IBM thinkpad A29 which with the 1400x1050 screen with KDE and antialiasing looks absolutely lovely - but the little red nipple-mouse thingy leaves my right hand in a horribly stressed state trying to use it - I really want the DELL kdb layout with the IBM screen etc
In days of old when knights were bold and powerbooks were yet invented, the keyboard of laptops hung right at the edge of the laptop. There was no place to rest your wrists. One of the great innovations of Apple that everyone else has since had copied (thank god) was one of the things that made the powerbook revolutionary: it added plenty of space below the keyboard where your tired tendons could take a break.
This is an urban legend. QWERTY was chosen, in fact, because typewriters using it were faster than competing schemes.
Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used. It certainly wasn't effeciency as the speed record has always been on DVORAK keyboards (that's the name of it, not the key arrangement.)
When you said I made this up, you were a liar. If you would read any decent account of the history of the typewriter, there were in fact speed competitions held and those using QWERTY layouts won. Dvorak's layout didn't come until much later.
The efficiency claim is also nonsense. Yes the fastest typing speeds in the world are achieved on Dvorak, but for the efficiency claim to be true, the average Dvorak keyboarder would have to be faster than the average QWERTY keyboarder. What few studies there are on this point typically find the differences in typing speed border on statistically insignificant.
See this story, which has a good look at the issues and was featured on Slashdot awhile ago.
I type about 130 words per minute and do a lot of keyboard. I've been very worried about carpal syndrome as I head toward my mid-30s (and have been keyboarding incessantly since I was 11 or 12).
The bottom line from what I can tell, is that there simply is no such thing as an ergonomic or safe keyboard. The bottom line is that the human hand and wrist did not evolve for keyboarding and even under the best of conditions, it is an awkward activity that will lead to carpal tunnel syndrome and similar problems for a significant number of people.
What we really need are alternative system that would reduce the total number of keys needed to be pressed to form words rather than different layouts of the alphabet (and yes there are such systems out there).
I spend almost all of my waking hours in front of a computer nowadays, and I don't want to fuck my career. I think the scary part is how it's so physical. Using a computer is a completely mental activity -- taking in information, reacting to information, creating new information -- that to be limited by a physical injury seems really frightening.
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Hey. It's Saturday night, Memorial Day Weekend and I'm still at work. Gimmie break.
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-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I don't know where you're coming from. He said "if they wanna give me some cash", not "you must give me cash". "No patent" is not at all at variance with "feel free to give me money". Hey, I don't even have a patentable idea, but if anyone wants to give me money, I'll take it.
And I think you're being too cynical when you say there's no reason to give him any cash. Someone out there might just feel grateful and give him some reward. Probably not as much as if he had sold it, and perhaps none at all, but it's not the impossibility you claim.
Another point: the only chance of his idea being stolen would be for someone else to patent it as their own idea, something he has specifically asked us not to do.
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Are you talking about the old iBooks? I've used them in the past, and the keyboard wasn't anything to write home about, IMO. Of course, I use a huge several pound IBM I-could-kill-you-with-this-thing keyboard that has real springs, with "hard" keys that make a loud noise when you press them. If you can guess, I'm not a big fan of "soft-touch" keyboards, so I suppose that's why the iBook didn't make a big impression on me.
It was small, like any other laptop keyboard, with all the normal keys in odd, cramped places. And, like many other laptop keyboards, the keys didn't give you much response, only depressing about a millimeter to activate the plastic sensor-thingie. (Solenoid?) Frankly, it didn't strike me as any different than any other laptop keyboard (ie, bad), except it was white and had Mac-specific keys.
As for the rest of the iBook, I found that I hated the trackpad. For laptops, I rather prefer the rubber nipple.
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You said, There's no need for 2 shift keys if a single one were properly placed somewhere more centrally.
This is incorrect, IMHO. Something I realized as I began to type faster is that my high school typing teacher's advice was right-on: never ever use the same hand for SHIFT and the key it's modifying. At high speed it's hard to time that SHIFT, especially when you're hand's already contorted to hit two keys. What often happens is that your other hand will hit a key before you let go of shift. By SHIFTing with the opposite hand you maintain a better cadence on the keys and are more efficient.
I also disagree that the CAPS LOCK key should be small. It's large for a reason - (i) for efficiency it has to be hit with your pinky, your least-coordinated digit, and (ii) depending upon the previous key press (e.g. 'G' ot 'T'), your finger might have a (relatively) substantial distance to travel. This interaction os governed by Fitt's Law : "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."
Now consider that the CAPS LOCK key, while rarely used, is critical. For instance, typing 'CAPS LOCK' without it would be slow and painful. But it's use is only justified if the extra acquisition time is less than the time it takes to use the SHIFT key (for short groups like 'RMS,' using SHIFT can be faster). So the faster you can hit the CAPS LOCK key, the more efficient you'll be in cases of long groups of capital letters. This doesn't happen often, but that's one reason why it's so important: you don't have much chance to practice.
I like your other ideas, though.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's true the Dvorak keyboard wasn't around at the time, but even an alphabetical keyboard is faster than a QWERTY.
You say that Dvorak is no more effecient than QWERTY... It's a fact that it is much more effecient. The average speed is irrelevent as the two groups of keyboard users are not comparable in size of make-up.
It's a fact that your fingers move 1/16th the distance when using Dvorak compared to QWERTY. Now despite how fast any one person type, the FACT that your fingers move less distance is absolute PROOF that Dvorak is faster. And as I've said, every typing speed record is held by Dvorak.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As far as typing... That's the bigest problem. Once people have found out about a better keyboard, they probably are already proficient (& complacent) with the QWERTY version.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Either is just as difficult as the other. Why make the user learn how to type again?
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You can hear more about it at http://www.dvortyboards.com/
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What's more important is the positioning and taking regular breaks. I found that regular icing helps.
Fight Spammers!
It's not ergo in the traditional sense, but my PowerBook G3 has a wonderful keyboard. In fact, one of the reasons I bought was for the keyboard. Not too cramped, good key travel, an almost-real keys (not chicklets).
On the PowerBook G3 series (Wallstreet/Lombard/Pismo) the gfx chip (RageII - RageMobility128 depending on model) is on the bottom of the PCB and somewhat connected to the bottom of the case via a metal plate. That's where almost all of the heat comes from. The heatsink on the CPU is the little metal shelding box that covers the half of the top of the PCB. Heat coming from the keyboard is from the CPU.
On the other hand, for something really ergonomic you would want palms facing each other and a two-sided keyboard in between. Palms downwards is a rather extreme position for the wrist and arm, which is why this would be a lot more comfortable. But then again, you would have to be able to touch type in order to use this, and learning might be tricky if you didn't know already.
The above only applies to typing, so things get even more tricky when you consider keyboard navigation in web browsers, games, and other programs. This is basically why I see a long, long future with the conventional flat keyboard. As one more example, if I'm using my right hand for eating pizza or other greasy/sticky stuff, I may want to use my left hand to press arrow keys (for scrolling the display). Now that would be annoying on a two-sided vertical keyboard. Of course a person with only one hand fit for typing would never buy such a keyboard. (I'm not saying there aren't other uses for one of your hands while surfing the web ;-)
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Then maybe you shouldn't be so click happy, you stupid fuck. I personally think the parent link is just an enforcer of the process of natural selection.
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The QWERTY keyboard, believe it or not, was present on the very first modern typewriter... the Sholes & Glidden, made by E. Remington & Sons (best known for their guns) beginning in 1874. Data from the 1878 patent can be seen here, as well as other historical data.
(Of course there were many other designs going back more than 100 years before. but they didn't go anyplace)
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Think I'm ignoring the obvious (the letter-pair distance thing is the most commonly cited reason for the layout)? The common example people use is "th". Well, look down at your keyboard... Where is the t? Where is the h? What about another real common combination like "ea" or "io"? That theory isn't really holding up to scrutiny is it?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
If we could mechanically arrange those to be physically close on the keyboard but physically distant on the letter carrier, then they could have chosen any arrangement they wanted.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
- There is a small wrist-resting area below the keys, so my hands don't have to hover while I type.
- This came to me as a surprise: the nipple-mouse is incredibly convenient because it doesn't require me to keep switching my hand between the keys and a real mouse. I became so accustomed to one that I keep looking for it with my fingers when working on a regular keyboard.
- Finally, the keys feel great and don't travel as deep as on a regular keyboard. This way, my fingers move a shorter total distance, lessening the exertion.
~Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Typewriters had metal arms that had to fly up. As the most commonly used keys in an A-Z arangement are near each other, they tended to collide a lot and jam. By moving to QWERTY, the common keys were spread out as much as possible, hence reducing jams and therefore increasing overall speed.
On a modern keyboard, the jams have no reason to occur as there are no metal arms - so the speed gain for QWERTY is lost. A new keyboard design would require people to relearn key positions but, otherwise, there's no reason why QWERTY is still needed.
Certainly there is an urban legend that QWERTY was chosen to slow typists - it wasn't, just to move the keys to more separated positions. But equally, dismissing changes to QWERTY in a non-typewritter environment, because of the urban legend is to miss the point just as much.
I wonder if we're psychologically predisposed towards uncomfortable keyboards. Even the QWERTY layout was created was INefficiency in mind -- people were typing too quickly on old typewriters and the teeth kept getting jammed together. I don't know about other who've gotten used to the ergonomic keyboards, but for someone who isn't a classically trained typist, they are a serious pain. I'm a slightly above average typist (around 65 wpm), but I tend to have my index fingers wander a little further than they should, and that extra space in the middle always ended up being more of a hindrance than anything.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Somehow I think that most modern laptops would need some sort of air circulation for the chip. Compare this to the g4 cube - no fan, yet it needs a 1/2ft^3 heatsink and a bunch of vents to properly cool. Even my TiVo with its 50Mhz powerpc processor has a large fan. Even if Apple could make a Gx based laptop without a fan, it would need circulation. I suppose they could, say, use the Ti Powerbook as its own heatsink, but then it would get extremely toasty and probably fail to function in a hot environment. Now, a lower-powererd waterproof PDA would be cool. I have an epod that I modified and it definitely has the capability to be made waterproof. No ventilation at all. All I would need to do would be to seal the joints, create some sort of sealed pushbuttons, and make the touchscreen work through a waterproof shield.
By the way, I got my TiVo for free in their essay contest a while back and it broke. I think I'm going to part it out tomorrow. Is there anything besides the hard drive(s) and fan that would be useful? I guess I could unhook the IR reciever and see if I could hook it to the IR header on my motherboard... possibly the TV tuner would be a normal bt848 card or something since that has pretty robust Linux support.
Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used.
That is not the truth of the matter. The QWERTY layout was indeed developed to increase typing speed. The reason has to do with the original Sholes typewriter being a finger-powered mechanical device. Like all manual typewriters since, each character on the Sholes model was set on the end of a metal bar that struck the paper when its key was pressed. The original keyboard layout was alphabetical. The problem was, that when a typist learned to type fast, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another when they were struck in quick succession. Sholes' solution was to calculate which letters were most often used in English and then position them as far from one another as possible. This lessened the chance of clashing type bars and allowed typists to work faster. Manual typewriters are a thing of the past now, but there's too much "user base" for the QWERTY layout to change it. Not quite as amusing as the way space shuttle solid rocket boosters ended up being the same in diameter as the width of an ancient roman war chariot, but the end result is similarly an artifact.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Sorry, but I'd have to disagree with you on the topic of a wrist rest. I'm guessing the one on your laptop is made of the hard plastic case that encloses the guts of your machine.
Resting your wrists on that while typing will put pressure on the carpal tunnel, increasing your risk of developing CTS. Personally, whenever my wrists start to hurt from long periods of typing, I move my keyboard to the edge of my desk so that I can't rest my wrists on anything, which I tend to do when I get lazy.
If you can't get out of the habit of resting your wrists when typing, you may want to look into getting some form of better support (I don't know how effective those gel wrist rests are).
Personally, I have a theory that typists did not suffer from CTS, even though they typed all day long, simply because they did not rest their wrists. It was impossible to generate enough force to create a clear letter on paper with a typewriter unless the hands were positioned above the keyboard, with the wrists not resting on anything. Thus, they had to have their wrists raised all day, and there was no extra pressure on the carpal tunnel. This is a big difference from what a lot of "lazy keyboarders" do today.
Another bonus of not resting your wrists is that your arms will get tired every once and a while, forcing you to get up and do something else. This is the perfect time for some of those stretches and exercises that are suggested by all the ergonomicists (sp?)
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
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I don't personally believe in special keyboards to prevent CP; I've had one brush with wrist pain that I quickly banished by changing my habits, and I only use regular keyboards. (I find the "natural" very annoying because I'm not used to the angle, and it reduces my speed.)
When at work, at least once an hour (and usually a bit more often) I make a point of getting up and walking around a bit. I deliberately stretch and flex my wrists and back. I also make a point of looking for a few moments at some object in the distance, even if it is the far wall of the office.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
A fine and noble sentiment, which is completely at variance with the next sentence...
And if they wanna give me some cash for it, I'll gladly take it.
If there is no patent, there is no reason for anyone to give you any cash. It's an idea which can be readily stolen; this is why we have patents.
If you want someone to give you some cash for your idea (which might very well deserve some), go to nolo.com and order a copy of Patent It Yourself. Patent it. Sell your patent to a company that actually makes laptop computers. Congratulate yourself for your productive participation in our fine capitalist society.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Most likely you simply don't know anything about the process. That's why it's worth the ~$50 for the book. It's complicated, but very do-able at low cost if you're motivated. The particular idea fronted by our parent post is especially suited to the PIY method I think.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The poster said SR, not AI.
SR means I could dictate this article. You are proposing a system by which I could say "Computer, draft a reply to this idiot and show me the next post," and this post would be posted automatically.
Quite a different technology, that.
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There seem to be two keys to this. First, I wasn't copying, so there was no read/translate/transfer step involved. Second, I was on a computer with a backspace key and not being scored on perfection. Both of these are realistic conditions for typing in the modern workplace, BTW.
And I do regularly attain that kind of performance, especially in bursts when I'm pounding out a section of code which contains a lot of keywords I'm used to typing. Yes, fingers are flying; I've noticed (you get where you can actually observe yourself, since you're not thinking of the finger movements) that one finger will be headed toward the wrong key and, before it arrives, the right pinky is already headed toward the back arrow. The true max key rate is probably closer to 150 wpm equiv, because I do a lot of short pauses and backspacing. But this kind of speed is possible on a computer.
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All the alternative methods proposed -- speech, touchscreens, handwriting recognition, blah blah blah, have the same problem; they are slow and inexact. Handwriting schemes actually cause worse CP problems than keyboards. (Today I get writer's cramp if I have to handwrite more than 1/2 page or so; I can type for hours, with regular brief interruptions, with no problem.) I do not have to use some alternate scheme to inform the computer that I mean "here" instead of "hear" or correct the fact that it heard "beer" or "deer" or "fear." If I type the same thing a lot I can get very very fast at it.
I have watched the operators of machines who have to do a few simple functions over and over move from the touchscreen to the keyboard, and eventually become so proficient that their fingers are not visible they are moving so fast -- with no training at all! This is why, in my job, I never code a function in a GUI or touch environment without a keyboard equivalent. The keyboard is not the most intuitive, but it is the most efficient, man/machine interface designed so far.
The scheme of 100 or so keys arranged in ready proximity to the fingers seems to allow a great deal of information to be transferred from a properly trained brain to a machine with minimal error. None of the alternative methods I have seen proposed come close to this, despite the ease with which some might be picked up by novices.
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This is definitely the most comfortable laptop that Ive ever had the pleasure of typing on. While there are a few _layout_ changes that I would make just for the sake of convenience, I can sit and pound away for hours at a unix shell or a term paper and be none worse for the wear.
I believe this is a result of the relatively soft plastic that was used in the construction of the keys, you dont feel like you're pounding a brick when you make a keystroke. Also another point of interest is the rounded front edge of the machine. While this _may_ have been designed for more form over function, it achieves a dual purpose. It's quite comfortable to just lay your wrists on the computer, and this alleviates many of the cramps etc. that Ive had from other laptops.
Most have a solid 90 degree corner there for your computing pleasure forcing most to either suspend your wrists in an uncomfortable manner or risk cutting off circulation to your hands.
If any of you happen to know someone that owns an iBook, or maybe you live in a city where they have a retail store that carries them, try it out. While some of the keys may take a little getting used to (like hitting F12 instead of Delete accidentally), overall it has a really solid and comfortable feel.
Cheers,
Syn
I have studied the problem specially (for desktop though) and I see no good method of text input at all.
Firstly, forget about direct neural interface and speech input. The neural interface is terribly slow, the speech input cannot deal with programming language texts.
Then, forget about a stylus and touchscreen. Stylus is simply too slow, touchscreen will cover your screen with grease from your hands.
There is a nice product that looks promising - Alphagrip - but AFAIK it's still not in production, and I fear it has a lot of other problems, for instance, I cannot imagine how it can be used as a game device as claimed by inventors, or how the index finger can press UP.
Datahand looks the best and is ergonomic enough but is simply too big to fit in a laptop.Twiddler IMHO requires too non-ergonomic fingers movement severely limiting the input speed.
The following methods look promising:
Keybowl that can be emulated with a pair of analog joysticks taken from Sony PS Doubleshock joysticks,
Wlonk - a 10-key macroprogrammable chording keyboard (You should design the mouse, driver and formfactor yourself),
and variations of TheBAT, DataEgg, 7KEY a.s.o (7-key 1-hand chording keyboard. Are you going to study the chords?)
Remove all SPAM from my email to answer.
- There's no need for 2 shift keys if a single one were properly placed somewhere more centrally.
- CAPS LOCK is typically double the size of normal character keys, that's needless.
- The 4 arrow keys could be replaced by a single small joystick-like piece, that could even read odd angles if you set it to do so!
- Consider giving the delete key a shift-function above it, perhaps "Undo Delete" that would easily restore in a cut-and-paste fassion.
Other ideas....?