anyone here converted to the Dvorak keyboard?

[Mahlennacht]

I've been trying Dvorak since the 17th of July - still pretty darn slow after touch-typing qwerty all these years - wondering if anyone here has had experience changing over, how long it took them to regain a fast speed, and if they thought it was worth it... no I don't have carpal tunnel, and luckily I don't use a keyboard for a living - I just thought it would be cool to learn it. Was also briefly considering the one-handed Dvorak setup so I could type with my right hand and mouse with my left, but that seemed a little too quixotic.

I'm still much less than halfway to my original speed after 2 weeks, which is frustrating, but I seem to be past no-return - I've forgotten some of the qwerty key positions already. But I'm considering abandoning it if I don't get up to speed in another month (or less, preferably). Also I might be a little bit screwed if I ever have to use a manual typewriter for some reason...

[Azred]

I haven't even found them in any stores in this area; I think I would have to place a special order to get one. However, I did try it some years ago, but didn't like it. Too stuck on the old setup, I suppose.

[Mahlennacht]

Well, I just used my existing keyboard and via WinMe's Control Panel reconfigured the key mapping to Dvorak - either ignore the keys and look at the layouts available at sites like this, and/or relabel the keys (which I did, with homemade labels)

This way if I decide to switch back I won't have spent any money on hardware

[Zero Alpha]

Originally posted by Mahlennacht: Well, I just used my existing keyboard and via WinMe's Control Panel reconfigured the key mapping to Dvorak - either ignore the keys and look at the layouts available at sites like this, and/or relabel the keys (which I did, with homemade labels) This way if I decide to switch back I won't have spent any money on hardware

That keyboard layout has AOL at the start of second line. no way am i going to switch to a keyboard layout affiliated with the internet browser from hell

seriously tho this might be useful for someone new to keyboards, but untill it is proved to speed up typing im not going to be messing with my layout. relearning touchtyping all over again? i dont think i could do it!

[andrewas]

I seem to recall that QWERTY was specificaly designed to slow down typists who were jamming the old mechanical typewriters. So its very possible that dvorak is faster to use, but I'm still not switching. I work on to many computers to do that, and besides it would screw up my game configs something awful.

[/)eathKiller]

You've got to be kiding yourself if you belive that this is actually slowing DOWN typists! [img]tongue.gif[/img] Thousands upon thousands of term papers, news articles, stories, etc... are written each day using QWERTY how can it ever be replaced by a new method? Though I've seen it in my computer science booklets, I have no desire to switch to such an odd and outcast typing method, besides, I have no reason to type AOL over and over, if I think AOL i know what points in the keyboard to punch EXACTLY the same for each letter by which I spell words. How I have come to memorize this, I'm not sure, i guess it just came along naturally, still though. I have no desire to switch my own configuration and I've heard some pretty bad stuff about the new method slowing down and even resulting in the downfall of many small businesses...