Dvorak

[UUD-40]

I'm going to teach myself to be left handed. 

This does bring up a point though. I guess Dvorak users are apart of a minority among the Technology world that isn't recognized. Kinda like being left handed in a right handed world.

Yes, Using 'regular' keyboard is going to be a pain at times, which is why I asked if you could still touch type on a QWERTY. Should be no real problem though, if at work I would assume they would let you use your own keyboard School would be tougher, and good luck trying to find a laptop! 

[soh]

I'm going to teach myself to be left handed. 

This does bring up a point though. I guess Dvorak users are apart of a minority among the Technology world that isn't recognized. Kinda like being left handed in a right handed world.

Yes, Using 'regular' keyboard is going to be a pain at times, which is why I asked if you could still touch type on a QWERTY. Should be no real problem though, if at work I would assume they would let you use your own keyboard School would be tougher, and good luck trying to find a laptop! 

Damn, I forgot about that

Well, the only portable computer I would want would be a macbook. I guess I would have to get one of those.

And yeah, for work I would probably just take my own keyboard

And wait a second...didn't ANSI recognize the DVORAK layout? So, it has to exist on all computers .
The only problem would be that my college has a lot of security passwords that I would have to ask someone in charge for the password to change the layout on Windows.

Yeah, hi-games.

Then it looks like you have a a lot of practicing to do. Go go go!

[soh]

Its about to be a month that I have been using the Dvorak keyboard in 5 days, and I have gained back my QWERTY speed.

[soh]

And still improving

[erik]

A roommate of mine in college did the switch on his laptop, but eventually got sick of it and moved back.  It is definitely something I would be interesting in trying, because like haunted, I consider myself to be a fast and efficient typer on qwerty, very fast at 10 key, and I would be really curious to see how fast I could get on Dvorak layout. 

My parents forced me to do Mavis Beacon teaches typing for an hour per day for one summer, between 2nd and 3rd or 3rd and 4th grades.  I reached my absolutely highest typing potential during my first run in q2, 98-2000.  My typing speed has definitely gone downhill as my computer usage has dwindled.

[soh]

The funny thing is, it doesn't take that long to learn the Dvorak keyboard. It can be hard at first because you're so used to using QWERTY, but after a while you get used to it. My fastest speed on QWERTY was 85, but I was getting around 70s or 60s. Now I have succeeded that average, and I still get faster every month. It feels a lot more comfortable too.

If I had been that young to learn how to type, I probably would have been typing extremely fast as well. I hear Mavis Beacon is a good typing tutor. I learned QWERTY in high school in my Junior year. I wish that I knew about Dvorak back then.

[erik]

Where did you go to school, public/private, etc.?

I was already at 30 WPM by 4th grade...after I did my own summer of typing lessons we ended up doing it in our computer class anyway, but I was well prepared.  I only had trouble with remembering x from z at the bottom.  I still have problems with using the opposite shift key, I only use the shift key on the left hand side.

[soh]

Public. I did some magnet schools on the way up. What about you? My typing teacher was more interested with the Word, Excel, and Power Point classwork that we had to do. The class was called Word Processing, and she had us only doing 10 minutes of typing practice; it was dumb. I never payed attention to her though. I would practice typing for the 30 minutes of class. And then finish off my classwork as homework at home. I still use that same typing tutor(Typing Master) till this day.

Yeah, X and Z can be rough. I kinda always had a problem with some of the letters with QWERTY though, so I would occasionally look at the keyboard every once in a while like for Z or Q and W. Not because I didn't memorize them, but because it was hard to type and not make mistakes. The Dvorak keyboard eliminated that for me. Its much more efficient than QWERTY

[soh]

You can't imagine the amount of money that I've spent on keyboards in the past 2 years now. I think I have at least tossed away 8 keyboards. Because my cat chewed the wires off of them. I think I've spent over a 100 bucks total. These are the ones that I have left. And only one of them is a QWERTY KEYBOARD, the rest of them are DVORAK KEYBOARDS. I think I am going to use this DELL keyboard to play quake 2 though, so that it will make it easier to type on.