The non-qwerty layout is, as usual, the whole point of making a non-standard keyboard. ;-) Anyway, I would be interested if they didn’t make mistake no 1: It’s about as wide as a standard keyboard. That means that most people unless they have very wide shoulders end up straining their right shoulder, which is a common reason for repetitive stress injury.
Why does that make me non-interested? Because clearly these people have not made their ergonomic homework.
If they get rid of the keypad it might be worth trying out. But I still don’t see why A and U are such huge buttons. U is not a common letter. The most common ones are A and T…. And are the snakey layout really easier to learn? I’m skeptical…
There are hundreds of weird keyboards out there. Most of them makes no sense.
I’m a happy user of a TypeMatrix 2020 – and I’m using a Dvorak layout of course.
I’m skeptical of their claims that you can learn their layout in an hour.
There also seems to be no evidence that their layout is actually faster for typing; if you look at other alternate layouts like Colemak they actually have statistical data to back it up, which was totally missing here.
reading ⇀ Shadowmarch. listening ⇀ Hammerfall. playing ⇀ Patapon 2. hacking ⇀ Delta. Fafnir. studying ⇀ Turtle geometry. designing ⇀ a programmer's editor. looking forward to ⇀ getting my Macintosh Color Classic. =) other activities ⇀ playing with cats and baby. ^_^
Lennart Regebro said,
June 21, 2009 @ 2:07 am
The non-qwerty layout is, as usual, the whole point of making a non-standard keyboard. ;-) Anyway, I would be interested if they didn’t make mistake no 1: It’s about as wide as a standard keyboard. That means that most people unless they have very wide shoulders end up straining their right shoulder, which is a common reason for repetitive stress injury.
Why does that make me non-interested? Because clearly these people have not made their ergonomic homework.
If they get rid of the keypad it might be worth trying out. But I still don’t see why A and U are such huge buttons. U is not a common letter. The most common ones are A and T…. And are the snakey layout really easier to learn? I’m skeptical…
ulrik said,
June 21, 2009 @ 5:15 am
What’s the deal with the left hand side? Only three keys for the home row, where you have four fingers to lay to rest..
Federico said,
June 21, 2009 @ 6:29 am
There are hundreds of weird keyboards out there. Most of them makes no sense.
I’m a happy user of a TypeMatrix 2020 – and I’m using a Dvorak layout of course.
Chris MacLeod said,
June 21, 2009 @ 7:58 am
I’m skeptical of their claims that you can learn their layout in an hour.
There also seems to be no evidence that their layout is actually faster for typing; if you look at other alternate layouts like Colemak they actually have statistical data to back it up, which was totally missing here.