The TouchStream - Yet Another Keyboard?

omen asks: "I know the subject of keyboards seems to come up every week or so, but the FingerWorks has recently come to my attention. Before I shell out $330 for the TouchStream Stealth, I was wondering if anyone has any experience with it. Is the gesture system useful? How hard is it to get used to 'zero-force' keys? How well does the 'two finger' mouse work? Any thoughts on the Qwerak layout?" This keyboard looks to be another incremental improvement on ergonomic keyboards, but are these keyboards really good enough to justify their prices?

Comments

QWERAK the Inclement

[fm6]

I personally would never switch to a non-QWERTY keyboard. The length of retraining (supposedly a couple weeks for QWERAK, a couple months for Dvorak) is beside the point. What does matter: it would be a nightmare to be a QWERAK typist, er, keyboarder in a QWERTY world.

About a year ago, I bought a Goldtouch keyboard for the machine I do about 60% of my work on. This keyboard caught my eye mainly because the cursor keys are rather more rationally arranged than on the standard IBM 101 layout. I used to have a persistent problem of hitting Page or Home when I meant to hit an arrow key. No more. And 101 keyboards are just too damn big.

Took a little getting used to, but I now much prefer the Goldtouch keyboard. Except I had a hell of a time whenever I switched to my secondary machine. Finally had to get a Goldtouch for it as well. It was either that or trash the first one.

And my mutant keyboards were still QWERTYs! Forget QWERAK or Dvorak.

YMMV. Especially if you're a hunt-and-peck typist, with fewer skills to unlearn. I'm a touch-typist, a skill I learned on an actual typewriter (that's how old I am). One with blank keys, to break me of the habit of looking at the keyboard.

Still, I wonder who really needs the extra 30% throughput that non-QWERTY keyboards supposedly offer. Aside from professional keyboarders. I think the rest of us need the extra time to stop and think!