Date: 26/1/05 05:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] onyxtears.livejournal.com
Could you not just switch the keys around and remap the keyboard?

Date: 26/1/05 05:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robinbloke.livejournal.com
No number pad, no number row, no function keys, no space bar.

It's crap.

Date: 26/1/05 05:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robinbloke.livejournal.com
Be a damn sight more sensible.

Date: 26/1/05 05:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nina321.livejournal.com
For once, I'm GLAD something isn't MacOS compatible.

Date: 26/1/05 05:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ksirafai.livejournal.com
...I've spent fifteen years learning how to type 70wpm on a qwerty for _this_ now? It looks like a tonka toy! ;P

Date: 26/1/05 05:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] twicedead.livejournal.com
If you start on an alphabetic keyboard you can actually learn to type faster than a qwerty. This is because qwerty keyboards were invented to slow down typists with the old manual typewriters that would get stuck if you struck the keys too quickly.

However, if you have learned on a qwerty, you will never be able to go faster on an alphabetic, you are stuck at the max qwerty speed.

Date: 26/1/05 05:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damianobf.livejournal.com
but it is the idea here that is important.

Ironically we were talking about this the other day. The Qwert keyboard was designed so when you typed on a manual typewriter the levers didn't hit each other.

As people were used to this layout it was transfered over to computers. But the point is with computers we don't have to worry about levers coliding when we type so is it time to look at things we use because 'they have always been like that' or is it worth a change?

Now I agree that this particular keyboard looks ugly and so forth but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at options. In the same way there are orthodeic keyboards.

I doubt it will take off due to be liking what they know but it is interesting.

TTFN

Tom

Date: 26/1/05 05:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robinbloke.livejournal.com
Not strictly true, well, at least as I understood it!

I thought the layout was to ensure that characters would be spaced out so that the hammers didn't hit each other - i.e. to ensure consequtive characters were as far apart as possible on average.

Wikipedia has a good entry.

Date: 26/1/05 05:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whotheheckami.livejournal.com
Surely the DVORAK keyboard has the potential to be faster? It was optomised to place the most used keys under the fingers that have the most manual dexterity. I've never tried one because I had enough problem when I was in a job that involved hot desking around much of Europe. My profile retained my UK keyboard mapping, but a I was confrnted with local character keyboards

Date: 26/1/05 05:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
Wow, Tom is alive!

Date: 26/1/05 05:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lanfykins.livejournal.com
The problem with that is that pretty much everyone who uses keyboards is used to the QWERTY layout. It's not so much that they like it or don't want to change - it's that altering reactions that have been etched into motor memory for tens of years is far from easy!

The only demand for a change will be from people just starting on keyboards, and people who don't use them that much. I don't think it's really enough of a market.

Though if I can get to 92wpm on a layout designed to slow me down I'd love to know what speeds I can reach on something decent!

Date: 26/1/05 05:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damianobf.livejournal.com
yup I do stil exist I just lurk alot

Date: 26/1/05 06:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damianobf.livejournal.com
true. But there are people out there coming to computing. The Wikipedia article that robin directed us to is very good. I like the point on the Dvorak keyboard that it is used as an illustration by management consultants to illustrate the difficulties of change.

Anyway off to lunch now...

Date: 26/1/05 06:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sogoth.livejournal.com
One of the guys at work has one of these Elan keyboards and can type stupidly fast on it and says that it's the most confortable keyboard he's ever used.

this keyboard looks damn hard to type with, but is apparently really comfortable too

Date: 26/1/05 06:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] duncanneko.livejournal.com
As our Human Computer Interface lecturer would delight in pointing out, it's highly unlikely this will ever catch on simply because the overwhelming majority of people are used to QWERTY. Even new users would get used to this, and then face the (now even steeper) learning curve to get used to QWERTY when they, for example, had to work with computers.

It's a keyboard layout optimised for beginners, which sounds like a good idea, until you get to the point where they have to use a computer in another situation and therefor have no experience with 'normal' layouts.

Dvorak is, I believe, far better for optimal typing speeds, and therefor has a more logical reason to be taken on by the majority of serious keyboard users, and yet enjoys no more than a minority following. I doubt this will catch on any time soon, for all its pretty colours.


And that concludes Duncan's Lecture for Today ^_^

Date: 26/1/05 06:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] briggsy.livejournal.com
Ugh. Alphabetical order has no relation to typing at all. At least qwerty, for all its flaws, does encourage a left-right pattern to typing. And where are the number keys? Pressing a modifier to type numbers is a stupid idea! Sheesh, whoever designed that wasn't thinking about the needs of typists.

Date: 26/1/05 06:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
The Elan just looks weird...

The chair mountable one looks cool and I could imagine that it's comfortable.

Date: 26/1/05 07:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Patented? I don't think these guys were the first to think of alphebetizing the keys...

Date: 26/1/05 07:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] angusabranson.livejournal.com
Hmmm.... I think I'll stick to qwerty. I've been using it since I was 7 (a very, very long time ago) and it's getting hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

I had enough problems typing on a French keyboard because of the changes on that!

Date: 26/1/05 08:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ua-meruti.livejournal.com
Ah I remember fondly the day I had to work on a bunch of French PCs with AZERTY keyboards. What a laugh that wasn't.
Of course, the alphabetic keyboard was why I was no good at Speak 'n' Spell.

Date: 26/1/05 08:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
That's not a problem as long as you can touch type and can change the key layout in the OS to whatever you're used to.

Date: 26/1/05 08:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
See my comment to [livejournal.com profile] ua_meruti below.

Date: 26/1/05 08:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] astatine210.livejournal.com

You might as well relearn the alphabet as "qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm" instead. Isn't "abcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxyz" an arbitrary sequence anyway?

Date: 26/1/05 08:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jonnyargles.livejournal.com
Yegods, is it from V-tech?

Date: 26/1/05 09:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scy11a.livejournal.com
At work our FMC (Flight Management Computer is also alphabetical - typing in waypoints is one of the hardest tasks I have to do!

Date: 26/1/05 09:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lsur.livejournal.com
It's been around for a while, I'm a bit surprised you haven't come across it. What I'd like to see is a keyboard with the caps lock ligth on the caps lock key, not on the other side of the keyboard. My eyes tend not to diverge when I'm typing :¬)

Date: 26/1/05 09:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lanfykins.livejournal.com
Can I have one where the Insert key is nowhere near the Enter key please? I so love looking up and discovering I've been overtyping for several sentences...

Date: 26/1/05 09:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mazzarc.livejournal.com
that's correct Dr Penguin. I konw... I learned on a manual typewriter! Now this squizzle can do 80wmp accurately, 120wmp not accurately! On a QWERTY keyboard.

Date: 26/1/05 09:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
You learn something new every day...

Date: 27/1/05 04:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] whiskeylover.livejournal.com
Hmm- I'm not convinced. For a start, my keyboard has 89 keys, whereas this alphabetic one has a mere 59. While I can quite happily concede that some keys might be superfluous, I still think that they are missing a good few symbols, a number pad, etc.

I somehow also doubt the assertion that the QWERTY Keyboard was designed to slow the typist down- the left/right variation explanation seems a lot more logical.

It also appears that the keyboards take account of the frequency of the letters used in the different languages, thus giving you different layouts in different languages (I have a German keyboard for example, and while such letters as ö,ä, ü, or ß are specific to German, that does not explain why 'y' and 'z' are changed around- so the Germankeyboard is actually QWERZ rather than QWERTY)

I do however like the angling of the keyboard, something that is also availabe on normal QWERTY keyboards though. The colour coding however, rather reminds me of my typewriting course, many moons ago, where one had a colour coded layout showing you which keys to hit with which finger (Z,A,Q, 1, Tab, shift, cap, ctrl, little finger left, etc.)

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