[quote=“miltownkid”]I was going to restart my qwerty training but I decided to give Dvorak a whirl instead. Anybody have anything good or bad to say about Dvork?
I downloaded the English one and chose Dvorak where you see profile.[/quote]
Everything I’ve heard about it suggests that it doesn’t speed up your typing at all. One distinct disadvantage is that in the outside world (Internet cafes, for example) it won’t be available to you. I should think that would be confusing, and could negate any benefit (if there are any benefits). But if you’re determined, go ahead and give it a try and let us know how it works out.
It may be good for avoiding RSS (carpal tunnel syndrome, etc.), since there is less movement of the fingers – the most-used letters are all on the home row, as opposed to qwerty, where ‘t’, ‘e’, and ‘h’ are all stretches. Yes, I’m just talking out me arse, but it can’t be any worse than qwerty, and might be marginally better. I’m sure there are no studies whatsoever on this.
I tried it for a little while; given that I’m already a fairly proficient touchtypist with QWERTY, and having heard Dvorak can give a bit of a boost to speed, I figured why not. Well, it’s a pain in the arse. I rely on typing to get my work done - hell, typing is damn near 99% of the physical work my job involves. So trying to learn a new typing system while still having to type to make a living, too much hassle. Did seem a bit more logical than QWERTY, but I eventually came to the conclusion that there’s no sense trying to reinvent the wheel. QWERTY works for me, and works well, so I’ll stick with it, for now at least.
[quote=“robert_storey”]Everything I’ve heard about it suggests that it doesn’t speed up your typing at all. One distinct disadvantage is that in the outside world (Internet cafes, for example) it won’t be available to you. I should think that would be confusing, and could negate any benefit (if there are any benefits). But if you’re determined, go ahead and give it a try and let us know how it works out.
regards,
Robert[/quote]
I also read that many people have minimal speed benefits and for some they get slower. But it seems like almost everyone who switches all the way over say it’s much more comfortable to use. With windows XP it’s really easy to switch back and forth between the 2 styles (or add it if it’s not there). And so far I’m not having any problems switch between the two. I think I’ll be able to use either one when I’m done, but I’m already convinced that I’m going to switch over to Dvorak. I haven’t memorized the entire keyboard layout so I’m still using qwerty.
[quote=“blueface666”]You’d be better off taking a plain vanilla keyboard and using a screwdriver to convert it over to the Dvorak layout. Much better IMHO.
I thought having different keys would be a problem at first, but your not suppose to look at the keyboard when typing anyway (which I still do with qwerty), the the wrong keys are kind of a bouns . That habit will quickly be broken using Dvorak.
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. That habit will quickly be broken using Dvorak.