Slashdot Mirror
Strange New Keyboards and Mice
robyn217 writes "Over at ExtremeTech, I just reviewed a few strange new keyboards--and they're pretty "out there". On Monday, we posted a review of a vertical keyboard (imagine a standard keyboard split in half, with both side vertical). Today we posted the review of something that doesn't even resemble a keyboard--it's a whole new system of input. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, we'll be posting new reviews of strange, but interesting input devices."
Not exactly new. There are more, I'm just too lazy to paste them all.
Is a Special Mouse Necessary? Yes, it's not easy to flip between the SafeType keyboard and a standard mouse because it requires the forearm to swivel from a neutral position to a pronated position very frequently. After a day or two, the wrists can get a little sore.
The cost of the keyboard and special mouse is $329 USD, easily more expensive than some top of the line computer hardware and rivals some high quality monitors as bank breakers. With that considered, not to mention having to get used to games with this setup, few games will ever use this, let alone see or touch it in real life.
It's nice to see Safetype actually making these boards.
When I was out and about searching for something beyond the flat-as-a-pancake keyboard, I'd originally seen this design all over the web, but only as the product of research at Cornell, with no actual plans to put it into production. Seems they've changed their position on that front, though.
Here is Cornell's white paper on the vertical keyboard and its effects on posture and the like.
I ended up with a Goldtouch, which I am very happy with not only because it relieved any problems I was having, but because their customer service is among the best I've ever dealth with, anywhere, for *any* product or service out there. Wonderful people. They really stand behind their product.
Ack!
My general problem articles and reviews such as A Week of Wacky Input Devices is that they are not empirical. That is, little soft or hard research is done. I'd like more data bases on market research, user surveys, usability studies, and so forth. Opinions can certainly interesting and useful, but they don't have the same bite as research. Give me more data!
If you are interested Dvorak keyboards, I suggest you check out The Fable of the Keys by Liebowitz and Margolis (1990). At a minimum, it is a long article on why Dvorak failed economically, but it covers more ground than that.
How to Download YouTube Videos
The keyboard is a little small but a nice touch that it's detachable making it a nice slim portable keyboard that happens to match my PowerBook G3. I hunt and peck anyway (but still 40 words a minute)
I'd suggest it to anyone.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Maybe I missed it, but it didn't look like he reviewed several keyboards and mice; it just looked like one keyboard and one mouse.
I used the BAT for a few weeks. It was great for non-programming, but for programming it was very inefficient (having to hit a chord to say "now I'm going to shift, or ctrl, or alt", and then having to hit the chord for the actual key. Some situations even required three chords in series to generate one character.
But for writing, documenting, and emailing, it was really great. Mouse drivers would love it too, since it allows you to keep one hand on the mouse while your other hand does all the typing.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Unfortunately, I have a Palm-type Palm, but if I had PocketPC-type palm, I'd jump at this app.
-T
I have a Datahand -- it's a device that is built to fit your hand. Each Finger rests in a well, there is a button you can push down, one forward, backwards, left and right.
. jpg
No need to peck keys, just move fingers.
The best thing is that the control, shift, alt etc keys are controlled with your thumb. I've had it for 3 years now, and I love it.
Here's a picture
http://www.datahand.com/images/proiitest
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
The shame of it, people writing articles on a keyboard they are comfortable with on an OS they are comfortable with!
Oh that's so easy. Noone liked my idea so it's obviously racism.
People have been finding alternate solutions for Asian inputs for a long time, I'm sure if a 4,000 character keyboard was a good idea someone would have tried to sell it. I have to type in Pinyin and pick my characters from a list, but it really isn't that slow. Most of the Taiwanese computers I have seen use Zhuyin Fuhao (another phonetic system). 4000 keys would be impossible to look through and work for.
Other than one or two people, noone was mean to you. Just because people disagree with you doesn't make them racists.
I use a Datahand every day at work. I got it due to some serious tendinitis I had about a year ago. My tendinitis was induced by a bad reaction to the antibiotic Cipro, if you're curious.
The Datahand is not too bad to learn for the letters. But the numbers and symbols which are often used in programming take more time. It took me about 1 month to get used to it. I can type at a reasonable speed on it for English text. I use the built-in mousing feature, which is a drag. Cursoring around is not the way a mouse was designed to be used. But I learned a lot more keyboard shortcuts and it's not a huge hindrance. You can use a normal mouse with the datahand if you wish.
The big claim of the datahand is that they've minimized both the force and distance required to press a key, and I feel this was a good choice for people with tendinitis. Also, the placement of the control, shift, return, and backspace keys on the thumbs is a big win and has definitely helped out my pinkie fingers.
The datahand is about as noisy as any other keyboard.
However, the datahand is expensive, and there is a new keyboard on the market now which claims to have zero force. www.fingerworks.com. It is a traditional keyboard layout, and looks pretty cool. I have considered trying one of these, and I think it would be portable enough for laptop use, they even market one specifically for that.
If anyone is curious, my tendinitis has largely healed now due to physical therapy, stopping almost all keyboard activity for about 2 months, using the datahand after that and limiting my keyboard activities as much as possible for about 4 months, and taking frequent breaks from keyboarding even when using the datahand. I will probably always have to be careful about RSIs due to what happened, but I believe the datahand and a caring boss allowed me to get through a horrible time in my career.
Now that my hands are pretty well healed, I use the datahand at work and my normal laptop keyboard at home. I feel that the diversity of using two different keyboards is also helpful in keeping RSI away.
CTRL+ESC brings up the start menu
Try the Kinesis keyboards. Enter is next to the space, under the right thumb. Control is just above it.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
The QWERTY layout is actually designed to slow down typing.
This is a fallacy. The QWERTY layout was designed to keep the keys from sticking, thereby increasing speed.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The gestures as a method of text input are doomed because the gesture devices don't provide the tactile feedback. I mean: They don't click. Without this feature, the gestures must rely on the sophisticated methods of gesture-to-dictionary mapping that narrow their use to natural-language text input.
BTW the same argument fully relates to different virtual keyboards projected by laser rays and, somehow, to the most modern non-clicking rubber-contact keyboards where you cannot be sure that the key was really pressed until either you see the letter on the screen or the keyboard bends under the force you apply.
The second problem is that the gestures need much more physical force to use than, say, Datahand, BAT and similar devices. It is a BIG difference for the people with physical disabilities.
Why is there an problem with an interface based on pushing buttons? I can't imagine any gesture based interface becoming more useful than a keyboard. While quite primative, I use the gesture feature in Mozilla, and while it is useful to some extent, most of the gestures go unused because they're too complicated to learn and to use.
I like typing a whole lot better than writing with a pen or pencil, because rather than having to take the time to shape each individual letter, a simple press of a button instantly produces the entire letter. I don't have to worry about trying to shape my motions such that my writing is legible, I merely have to push the correct buttons in the right order. It doesn't matter if I use the wrong form, it doesn't matter if I have the keyboard on my lap or on a desk or sitting on the floor, hitting the right key produces the same results no matter how you do it.
Even a 6 year old, if you tell them to type the word "cat", can most likely sit down at a keyboard and figure out how it works, even if they're not using the proper form. And as someone who can touch type about 80-100 words a minute, I can't imagine moving away from the simplicity and efficiency that discrete buttons provide.
I see two options for input using gestures: character at a time, and word at a time. Word at a time would end up being like learning Chinese, a different symbol for each word, so I think that's out for most of us. Entering one letter at a time, I cannot imagine any way to enter a single letter faster than pushing a single button. When I'm pressing one key, the next finger is already moving to where it needs to be to hit the next key, and it forms a rhythm of motion.
The only form of communication faster than button based keyboards would be speech, and there's too many problems with using that to communicate with a computer. I don't think button based input is going anywhere, anytime soon.
Very true, and not all us two-finger folks are slow, either. I type two-finger without looking at the keyboard most of the time (once I get "lined up" properly), and can do 50WPM or better if I'm typing stuff out of my own head. Sure, it's not as good as a decent touch typist, but it's not half bad, and since I don't write thousands of lines of code or take dictation for a living, it's plenty for me. Two-finger typing lets me keep my hands in a much more natural position: above the keyboard, fingers curled, wrists almost straight instead of bent outwards and upwards relative to the forearm like a touch typist's. My arm also does much of the work, rather than putting it all on my fingers and tendons in the hand. It does make my arms a little tired if I type for an extended period, but it's much better than chronic wrist pain. ;) The only time I get quasi-CTS-like symptoms is when I've been making excessive use of the mouse (damn 8-hour Quake marathons... ;-D ). I can type for hours with no similar problems.
;)
Of course, this method of typing means that any funky keyboard is useless to me. Even the curvy egro keyboards are impossible for me to use. As such, I think I'll be sticking to a flat keyboard for some time to come...
DennyK
I recently found the Orbitouch keyboard which looks like a giant leap forward - basically a pair of paddles that can move to one of 8 'compass points', giving you 256 key combinations, plus a mouse built into the right paddle. I haven't got to try one out yet but I think it looks like the right step away from the finger-wiggling which we're really not designed for...
Has anyone tried the Orbitouch? I'd be interested in hearing some feedback.
Nick Donaldson mailto:psyclops@psyclops.com Bit Wrangler Extraordinaire! http://www.psyclops.com/
I'm typing this on a Kinesis Contour keyboard and it's a wonderful thing. It abandons the traditional 'staggered grid' layout (which is fine, because none of my keyboards relies on swinging a thin metal arm that has to be kept clear of all the other thin metal arms) and puts the keys in a bowl shape around the fingers. It feels so much more comfortable and natural to type on -- and it also fixed the tendons in my right hand, which were freaking out from having to reach over to the backspace and 'programming' keys so much.
It also has total programmability -- which means that finally I can do something with the scroll lock key (I use it to toggle Japanese/English input).
Mine is from the mid 90's and is still working perfectly.
N.B. I do not work for Kinesis. I merely plug their keyboard all the damn time because I like it.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I just checked:
KP Typing Tutor work with wine (the program).
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.