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AlphaGrip Starts Mass Production
punchy_boy writes "The AlphaGrip AG-5 is finally starting production. News of pre-orders for this device was reported 6 months ago.
This device is a keyboard and mouse in a 'gamepad' style form factor. It's been a while coming and the guy(s) at AlphaGrip deserve a pat on the back for sticking with it.
I was so enthusiastic about this device I wrote some software to help me learn to use it properly (alt link)."
Actually, you should watch the video. I don't think it'be that great in an office, but like they say, during a car or plane trip, it is interesting.
And if you think you don't want to learn how to use, it could be that you're growing old and don't want to change your little habits... hehehe
I wasn't really interested, untill I watched his little demo video. I really like the idea of being able to type while sitting in my lay-z-boy and not having to handle a wireless keyboard. I am sure it has a learning curve like anything else, but I am an avid console gamer and I think I could pick it up in a week or so, I might just order one right now.
Steering wheels make sense for racing games. They are still sold. It is one of those things that I don't think make sense when crammed into another style computer input device. Yeah, you can do it with a keyboard (no space!) and mouse but it doesn't make sense. A mouse isn't as intuitive as a steering input. A keyboard is less so as pushing a button isn't an analog input, but steering direction is analog.
But I guess it doesn't matter as realistic driving physics is outside of the gaming industry's grasp.
Even if there was a tested an proven layout that would gaurantee quicker results than QWERTY, why would anyone want to give up QWERTY? It's taken me years to perfect touch typing with QWERTY. On a good day with pretty simple sentences, I can easily do 100 WPM. So even if I could theoretically acheive an excess of 100 WPM with, say Dvorak, the time it would take to learn it, as well as the non-portability of the skill (what are the odds of finding another Dvorak keyboard wherever you go), are not worth it.
To compliment your quote: "An old hacker can't get used to them," you're right. We're going to stick with the tried and true. Maybe if you raise kids on a combination of Dvorak and QWERTY, they would better off, like teaching them two languages when they're young, but us old guys raised on QWERTY (yeah, 22 is old, shut up) are going to find it hard learning new tricks.
Think about some of the characters most often needed for programming in common languages: ( ) { } & * $ % @
They're all shift characters on qwerty keyboards, while characters I use relatively less frequently (like digits and most letters) are immediately available without any special combinations.
I guess the obvious problem would be the need for new layouts when using C or Lisp or Python or whatever, but it's still nice to dream about a keyboard designed for programmers in 2005 instead of secretaries in 1873.