Suddenly wondered: How many of y'all are using a qwerty keyboard, and how many the new-fangled (well, relatively new-fangled!) whatchamacallit other kind?

And what IS t'other kind called?!

I use a qwerty. Cannot imagine having to retrain my fingers/brain to function on t'other kind.... T'other kind IS supposed to be much faster though, yes?

Got to thinking about this, when pondering the work of the typists who do closed captioning for live events. They're pretty damn good, if you think about it....They must use t'other kind, I suspect. Not that that alone would make 'em faster, but it would probably be a contributing factor.

Depending on who you listen to.

http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/technology/usability.html

or check out links here:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_248.html

Then there's this site:

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/dissent.html

I have and use a qwerty, but i know its not hard to learn to use the other kind.. i have used them in training rooms, and was halfway there (to decent touch typing) in a week.(i can, when consentrating, type about 45 WPM, but most usually type closer to 30WPM)-- word processors with autocorrect improve my speed!

I learned to drive stick 3 on the column, (or in the venacular,3 on the tree) then i got a got a car with 4 on the floor, and now i drive 5 on the floor.

It took about no time to 'learn' the new configurations each time. Yes, the pattern is simpler, and each but the first is really only an expandtion of of the others.. but its not hard.

i think was it much harder is the number pad.
telephone number pads were intentionally made the reverse of calculater keypads, since the early telephone swithches were still slow, and could handle 'demon dialing' at first.

it especialy a pain with numeric based passwords... bank ATM's have 1 in upper right, like a telephone, but keyboards have 7 in upper right!

Isn't the 7 at the upper left, Helen? Well, you're dyslexic and I'm left-handed, so we should probably never try to drive somewhere new together. I'm easily confused. Although maybe we would symbiotize south of the Equator.

Isn't the 7 at the upper left?

This is just a suggestion, mind, but y'all are parbly at a computer keyboard as you read this. You mighht could look.

mighht could look

Think the lovely ASp was being diplomatic, Fong ;)

T'other kind is, indeed, the Dvorak keyboard which I learned, from Googling Dvorak and going to a very interesting site, was invented in the 1920's to make typing more efficient, since the qwerty layout was devised to slow up typists (so the type bars on the old manuals wouldn't jam). After WWII, a U.S. Army officer who had lost an arm asked Dr. Dvorak to come up with a modification of the keyboard layout which he could use with one hand. Dr. D came up with two -- the Dvorak Right Hand layout and the Left Hand Layout. These are extremely interesting; you can see a chart in the website. They are, apparantly sold quite often, as there are lots of people who have the use of only one hand. And it is also possible to reconfigure you own keyboard to any of the 3 Dvorak layouts (left, right or two-hand) without having to buy a new one.

the lovely ASp was being diplomatic

And I wasn't.

But not all computers have a number pad. Mine doesn't. Laptops generally don't. The lovely AnnaS could have been at a laptop without a number pad. Highly unlikely, but she could have been.

or more likely, helen could have dyslexia like, mis stated the correct position of the number on the key pad..
(i have tried to reply twice, and each time my computer crashed.. i guess it wants me to appear haughty or hurt... but i am neither, just incorrect!)

Laptops generally don't

Look at your

7 8 9
 U I O
  J K L
   M

keys.

the qwerty layout was devised to slow up typists Are you serious?? Well, I never! I'm gonna have to see if I can find that site, Bob. Thanks! MAN you learn something new every day!