Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Speed Trials

Dvorak update: I have reached 18 wpm with only 1.1% errors. Only 22wpm to go and I'll be back where I was.

It is still painfully slow and inaccurate.

8 COMMENTS:

Sylvia said...

Ouch! That must be frustrating Although using fuzzmail to document it made me grin - what a clever idea!

fairyhedgehog said...

I thought I'd let you all share my pain!

Whirlochre said...

Good on you for giving this a go. If I remember correctly, Stephen J Gould writes about the QWERTY keyboard in Bully For Brontosaurus, noting that it 'stuck' precisely because its keys didn't. Now we no longer have mechanical typewriter keys to get stuck, the only thing stopping us abandoning the less-than-good QWERTY solution is habit.

fairyhedgehog said...

I can tell that it's a much better system even at this slow speed.

The trouble is that everyone learns QWERTY first, so I'm not going from hunt and peck to 18 wpm but from 40 wpm.

I have given in a couple of times and used QWERTY since starting but I'm trying not to as it will only slow me down.

Robin S. said...

I'm a terrible typist - I neevr learned, actually.

Is this keyboard more intuitive?
(Not that that would help me!)

fairyhedgehog said...

I don't know about more intuitive but it is easier to type common words on it without making mistakes. Or so I understand.

So far the only improvement is that I type 'the' and not 'teh'.

If you wanted to learn touch typing for the first time, I'd say give it a go.

Kevin Musgrove said...

Good luck with it. I enjoyed having a go with it a long, long time ago but reverted to QWERTY by lazy default (and back then it was damnedly difficult getting hold of a Dvorak keyboard.

Braille's infinitely easier on Dvorak.

fairyhedgehog said...

Thanks Kevin.

Every day I wonder if I'll keep going with it or not because I get frustrated when I keep hitting the QWERTY keys. Then I type one of the words I know, like 'the' 'then' 'that' 'to' 'be' and I can see how much easier it's going to be if I manage to crack it, because the fingering is so much simpler.

I didn't know that about Braille.

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