QWERTY Keyboard Cleaning and Dvorak Conversion FINISHED

[BiOzZ]

i had a QWERTY and i want a Dvorak Keyboard so i made one!


first step was to clean the keyboard



i started by plucking every single key off the keyboard with a flat head screw driver



after that i than unscrewed the top from the bottom and put the bottom aside

i than i took the shell threw a vortexed Dihydrogen monoxide and hydric acid with salted carboxylic acid stream device ... AKA A DISHWASHER!



i than took the keys and mixed some soap and warm water in a bowel and stirred



after drying everything i than separated the keys up for easy remapping



after remapping and screwing the keyboard back in thanks to keyboard layouts on google and wikipedia



unfortunately the F and J keys had a backwards connection so F H J and U were 90* to the side (dont ask me why ... )



so i grabbed my label maker and had at it



Configuring windows was next
i went in to the control panel and searched for keyboard and found region and language ... click it and follow the shown steps



now im learning how to use this damned layout but i know at the end it will be worth it
this site helped me allot http://learn.dvorak.nl/
im 4 hours in and typing 30WPM .. not bad but im pushing to 140 or at least beat my 90 with qwerty

these keyboards are easier on the brain, hands, joints and are plenty faster than QWERTY keyboards (that were made to slow you down to prevent jams and cross keys) ... as im told

any thoughts on this project?

[Mussen]

It takes a real special breed of nerd to try a Dvorak conversion, most of the people I know gave up after a few days.
I don't necessarily buy that its going to be faster even after a few weeks of use, but thats what experimentation is for.

Good Luck, and keep good records over the next few days/weeks!


Also INB4 http://xkcd.com/561/

[BiOzZ]

It takes a real special breed of nerd to try a Dvorak conversion, most of the people I know gave up after a few days.
I don't necessarily buy that its going to be faster even after a few weeks of use, but thats what experimentation is for.

Good Luck, and keep good records over the next few days/weeks!


Also INB4 http://xkcd.com/561/

if you look at the idea of the Dvorak it makes seance that it would be faster
most of the keystrokes (70%) are in the home row where just 30% of keystrokes are in the homerow of a qwerty
80% of all major words have atleast 60% alternation form right hand to left hand allowing faster typing
there are very few awkward stretches to type anything
and when i first started to learn it it just made much more seance to me ... it took me months to learn QWERTY from a AZERTY russian phonetic keyboard and im learning the Dvorak far faster

not to much active testing has been done comparing QWERTY to Dvorak mainly because few people actually use the Dvorak but there has been testing showing shorter and quicker strokes can be made on the Dvorak and the simple fact that QWERTY was designed to slow down typing and Dvorak was designed to speed up

im now up to 40WPM in 6 hours of using it and i plan to be at 100 by the end of the month

honestly i recommend any one who programs or does any type of extended typing to give this a try
i can already see its use in speeding up my work flow dramatically

[Acedork]

Haha I was going to comment on how awesome a geeky project this was earlier, but had to go talk to some people on the other side of the office. I come back, and then see that its now featured on HAD. Nice job BiOzZ!

[Tim2]

simple but nice hack!
I need to try dvorak myself some day.

Tim

[Mussen]

It takes a real special breed of nerd to try a Dvorak conversion, most of the people I know gave up after a few days.
I don't necessarily buy that its going to be faster even after a few weeks of use, but thats what experimentation is for.

Good Luck, and keep good records over the next few days/weeks!


Also INB4 http://xkcd.com/561/

if you look at the idea of the Dvorak it makes seance that it would be faster
most of the keystrokes (70%) are in the home row where just 30% of keystrokes are in the homerow of a qwerty
80% of all major words have atleast 60% alternation form right hand to left hand allowing faster typing
there are very few awkward stretches to type anything
and when i first started to learn it it just made much more seance to me ... it took me months to learn QWERTY from a AZERTY russian phonetic keyboard and im learning the Dvorak far faster

not to much active testing has been done comparing QWERTY to Dvorak mainly because few people actually use the Dvorak but there has been testing showing shorter and quicker strokes can be made on the Dvorak and the simple fact that QWERTY was designed to slow down typing and Dvorak was designed to speed up

im now up to 40WPM in 6 hours of using it and i plan to be at 100 by the end of the month

honestly i recommend any one who programs or does any type of extended typing to give this a try
i can already see its use in speeding up my work flow dramatically

I came off a bit terse up there let me rephrase,

I suspect that starting fresh like you from a non-qwerty layout Dvorak would be faster, but for the majority of people switching would be very painful. I learned to type qwerty in grade school, so switching now would require me to overturn years of learned muscle memory, and I don't think I would ever fully adjust. I would love to be proven wrong, but there is a surprising lack of quality studies in the area. Dvorak does make sense, especially for programmers(even tho they have a Dvorak variant all their own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Sim ... mer_Dvorak) but with out a wide spread adoption I don't ever think I could take it up.

TLDR; I think your right, Dvorak should be faster, i just don't think some one who has spent their life on qwerty will ever be as efficient using it.

[Tachikoma]

I too am interested in taking up Dvorak, but the problem is that the rest of the universe uses Qwerty. Since I'm switching between lots of machines, it would be counter-intuitive for me to focus on anything but Qwerty.

[nihilus]

I made it here to try.
My only doubt is if I will get adapted, since i need to write in others languages (German and Portuguese), besides English.

[Vance]

Inspired me to convert one of my Model Ms

[hak8or]

One bad thing about Dvorak keyboards is they are not able to be used for games, as most require wasd close to each other, probably one of the reasons this has not gone mainstream yet.