Qwerty Keyboards

[Hopkirk]

Am I alone in thinking these are just plain stupid?

[ChuckFickens]

They are a legacy thing, a left over from reducing jams on mechanical typewriters.

In theory it would be possible to type faster on other designs.... not sure if I could after nearly 30years of practice on a qwerty keyboard though!

[shooty]

i could. i type one fingered

[Hopkirk]

I would prefer an ABCDEF keyboard.

[nungate]

I think when you've been taught to use the Qwerty keyboard properly you can see the sense in them. I was taught touch typing back in the dark ages on a manual typewriter, it was pretty heavy going then. I hate to see people typing with one finger it looks so strange

[pdust]

arent they designed so the most used letters are easiest to access or something... if they changed the design i would be buggered.....

[Hopkirk]

I try using two hands, but have to keep lifting my hands up to see where the keys are.

[pdust]

just keep doing that hopkirk and you will get used to it and not have to look so much ....

[shooty]

strange - that fits my profile

[Hopkirk]

I've been doing it for years!

[JonnyBoy12]

Yes, you are as I think they are the greatest thing sliced bread. What I say goes, okay?

By the way the best ones are Dell either model RT7D20 or RT7D50
They cost about £16ish and can be got from www.dell.co.uk

Hope this helps.

[pdust]

hmmm in that case......

seriously though thats how my son learned to touch type ..... he typed with 2 fingers and it bugged me, i kept telling him to try with all his fingers and showed him how and in the end he did it .... he can type really fast now...

[nungate]

right Hopkirk. Place your index fingers over the F and the J. That finger goes up to the R, down to the V and over to the GY and B, and do the same with the right index starting on the J, up to U, down to M and across to HY and N. The rest of the fingers, they rest over the DSA on the left and KL; on the right and they move up and down across the corresponding keys up and down. Thumbs operate the space bar and shift keys. Basically there's a finger for every key. When I was taught we had to spend hour upon hour typing frf frf frf juj juj and so on, sometimes there was chart of the keyboard for us to look at and woe betide us if we were caught looking at the keys. If you can learn to touch type it will speed up your typing
Here endeth the first lesson of touch typing ;)

[JonnyBoy12]

Very good but this is a real site offering the art of touchtyping. Do not expect to get this in one go. It could take a while to do this. See the link below:

http://www.typeonline.co.uk/

[bibblebub]

change the key-mapping so that they're in alphabetical order and paint over the keys to show the new layout

[owdhamer]

Whats the alternative

[237SJ]

They`re only stupid if you can`t touchtype. I was taught to type "properly". I`d be lost without a proper keyboard. I`d have to look at the keys would never be able to change the habits of a lifetime.

[237SJ]

I`ve never thought but just looking at the keys, I wonder if they were designed in that order because the most used letters are in the easiest position for the fingers. There are certain words that are a joy to type because of they way the fingers flow and the least used letters are in positions that are more awkward places for the fingers to reach.

[grasscarp]

Does anyone remember when you typed top fast on a typewriter and all the keys clumped up together. You then had to free them so they fell back into their semi circle.

[nungate]

And end up with fingers covered in ink as well Grasscarp, I remember those days well!

[bibblebub]

usually quite messy

hammers getting stuck was why we ended up with the qwerty layout; the arrival of electric typewriters was an opportunity to have changed to another layout (because there are no hammers) but business sense meant that companies wouldn't expect their potential customers to use something different to what they were accustomed