I did a google image search for Dvorak and turned up tonnes of layouts including the one I used when I switched. This one has the added benefit of showing you which finger does what.

Thanks again. I had no idea such a thing as DVORAK existed and I hope I can make good use of it.

Right now I’m typing this in Dvorak, even though Firefox is normally set to QWERTY, and I’m not having any real trouble. Only the first couple of sentences after a switch tend to go awry in that scenario (the same goes when I switch OpenOffice to QWERTY). After a couple of sentences my mind basically switches and the words sort of get onto the screen without my really realising where the keys for the individual letters are.

The one area where it does get confusing is keyboard commands. If I want to open up a new tab in Firefox right now I’ll likely end up opening my downloads windown instead (the T in QWERTY is the Y in Dvorak, so Ctrl + T becomes Ctrl + Y). That again is a matter of context, but because I don’t do as much of it it doesn’t get switched as easily as the pure typing.

But that too works the other way. When I have OpenOffice set to QWERTY I may well find myself trying to paste text by using Ctrl + . (. in QWERTY = V in Dvorak).

Some people do switch fully to Dvorak, but I keep most of my applications (though not the ones I type most in) in QWERTY so I don’t have any trouble using computers that don’t have Dvorak enabled.

Finally, as another illustration of the importance of context, it’s slightly trickier for me to type Dutch in Dvorak than it is to type English. As with other things it seldom takes more than a few sentences to settle down, but because most of my writing is in English that gets taken into account as part of the context switching.

Regarding the trackball: I have one to a former friend for christmas two years back and it was actually nice to use it, but I’ll stick with my Wacom pen tablet. I switched away from using a mouse about five years ago because I had severe wrist and arm problems; one time I couldn’t use the computer for a week. With the tablet I don’t have any issues at all anymore and in addition it is great for image editing.

What you wrote earlier about keyboards: it’s very interesting that you prefer the flat kind. I never got the feeling for those right. I have a MacBook and while the keyboard looks awesome, I don’t feel comfy writing on it for longer periods. That’s why I haven’t bought the new Apple Keyboard because it’s the same style. Instead, I am using a Logitech S530 for Mac. it has a build in area to rest your palms on and that helps a lot when you have to work for 8 hours straight.

What I did was to print out the keyboard schematic and hang it right under my monitor (I like to lean back when I sit behind the computer, so my monitor is pretty high up to get the sight lines right). For the first couple of days it was really a matter of struggling through, working out which key was where from the schematic and then finding it without looking and without being able to rely on my QWERTY touch typing sense.

But it was only a matter of days before I started finding the common letters automatically and no more than a week or two before I was pretty much as fluent in Dvorak as I was in QWERTY. And once I was used to it I was almost instantly faster in Dvorak.

The reason Dvorak is faster for most people who type both is that the arrangement, with the most commonly used characters all on the home row, is more ergonomical. This lets you type faster, but having to shift rows less frequently also takes a lot of strain off the wrists, which is a major reason for many people to switch.

I haven’t been writing a lot lately, so my Dvorak is relatively untrained right now, but even so it’s faster than my QWERTY. When I’ve been doing plenty of Dvorak I know from past experience I can get up to something over 350 keys per minute, maybe even up to 400 (today was the first time in quite a while I tested my speed).

In my case I started partly just for fun, and partly as a sort of preventative wrist protection. The biggest day of writing I ever did on QWERTY was roughly 6k, call it 40k key presses, and after than my wrists felt iffy for a while. Using Dvorak it takes days over 10k to make me feel iffy, and not even all of those do.

In that respect it’s similar to the reason I use a trackball rather than a mouse at home. I never really got any major trouble with my arms or wrists while using a mouse. But the number of little annoying twinges I feel has gone down a lot since switching to the trackball.

@Jarsto and tschilai: Me too, I can type faster if I do it from memory or make it up as I type. Usually my brains too fast for my fingers (sounds better than: my fingers are too slow) and then I get mixed up. I can touch type, I trained myself during the long cold winter months I spent in Munich during my internship because I used to get sick. I was looking at my fingers as I typed, then always glance up at the screen to see if I made any mistakes and the constant up and down made me motion sick. I must be wired funnily.

@Jarsto: Was it difficult for you to lean the Dvorak layout? I’ve never heard of that and looked it up. Though I understand that you have fewer keys and such, what is the actual advantage if you can already touch type on the QWERTY?

@tschilai: *pouts* No tv for you today, you go straight to bed!

@Matthias: Well, since there is emancipation, girls can participate in [will not write phrase because of search engines ] as well. But we still like you, even if you can’t keep up with us. Just kidding!

Unless my knowledge of German is letting me down (which is by the way distinctly possible) the closest translation would be a “Willy waving contest” but that’s only rarely used (though I’ve come across it here and there).

In more commonly used colloquial English idiom I’m pretty sure the closest translation would be a “pissing contest”.