One-handed Keyboards

strider5 writes "HandyKey has come up with a one-handed keyboard/mouse alternative for those sick the same old thing! They claim that it will work on *nix and Palms in addition to Windows systems... pretty neat! A variety of similar devices are summarized on a page at Stanford, but aren't quite as nifty. " I think everyone on earth wants a twiddler. If I had 2, I could type twice as fast, right?

Comments

The Twiddler has been around for a while

[Bookwyrm]

I have one of these in a box somewhere in storage. I picked one up a few years ago, four or five, actually. The picture they have on the site appears unchanged since then. A few comments on the Twiddler, at least the one I had:

• The shape of it is a bit awkward. By making it useable by either hand, it doesn't quite fit in either. Depending on the size and shape of your hand, it may be very uncomfortable.
  
• The buttons took a very noticeable amount of force to press. This made the awkward shape of it worse, as if it did not fit well within your hand it was hard to hold it steady enough when pressing the buttons. If they have reduced the required force some, it will have been an improvement.
  
• Someone should work out a better chording scheme for it. The default one is not that optimized. Yes, you can spend hours trying to work out a new one that you like, but I'd rather have a standard one that makes sense.
  

Overall, I thought it very neat, and would like to see it further developed, but it does not look like they have made any improvements in the hardware over the years. A better shape, softer touch buttons, and a built in spot for a battery (as opposed to siphoning power off the keyboard port) would make it potentially very nice.