I finally managed to learn Dvorak after all. It feels nice (easy on the fingers) but I’m still not altogether convinced that it was such a brilliant idea: I took the leap while I was between jobs and trained a lot with the “Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor†– that was essential! But it’s a nuisance to use other (normal) keyboards – and I especially notice that when using my (qwerty) PDA. And I also notice that there’s only one way to really learn it: type A LOT!!
At work, I’m still rather slow. What’s worse, it seems to me that I need to learn Dvorak three times because I write in three languages… can that really be? Perhaps it really can. German in particular is harder than English and Danish on Dvorak, but then it may also generally be trickier on Qwerty, what with all those “z”‘s and umlauts. There’s a reason why the Germans use Qwertz instead…
It’s been ten months with the Dvorak layout as I write this comment, and it has not convinced me yet. I still have not regained my old typing speed, and I still look at the keyboard WAY more often than I used to with Qwerty. And I still make LOTS of typing mistakes.
At home, I have gone back to Qwerty again, but not at work. Oddly, the mix does not bother me at all! What bothers me is that I now realize that the Qwerty layout isn’t that clever so going back to that won’t make me happy either.
I think I will admit defeat and switch back to Qwerty at work also.