Ask Slashdot: Do You Press "6" Key With Right Or Left Hand?

New submitter ne0phyte73 writes: In some countries and in some touch typing books key "6" is pressed with right hand and in some others with left. It's not a big issue until you have a split keyboard. Guys at UHK are putting it on the left side. Do you agree? What hand do you use to press "6"? Left hand here, but it's not a strong preference; I'll take a keyboard that omits Caps Lock wherever they put the 6.

Comments

Fixing the Caps/Control/Mouse Key's more important

[billstewart]

Most current keyboards have evilly put a nearly-useless CAPS LOCK KEY next to the A, where the CONTROL key belongs. This encourages awkward finger positions and hand strain, and ALMOST NOBODY NEEDS THE "YELL AT PEOPLE" FEATURE ANY MORE!

These guys did something interesting, putting a "Mouse" key there to shift some other keys to use for mouse functions, but it's a mistake; they could put that somewhere else and put the control key where it belongs.

Another feature they could implement, if they can license the patent at some non-outrageous price, is the "Half Keyboard" strategy, which lets you do single-handed typing by folding QWERT and YUIOP over in the middle - it either does the left or right half depending on whether you're hitting the mode key. Back when keyboards still used serial ports instead of USB, they made some small half-keyboards for Palm Pilots that were reasonably priced ($75-100), and some full-sized computer keyboards that were priced for the "Your Corporate Ergonomics Department Or Insurance Company Will Pay $400 For This" market, which were basically a standard keyboard with an extra shift that you could use either left-handed, right-handed, or both.