Datahand

[Input Nirvana]

Pros and cons with everything I guess. Good thing you can give it away pretty easily here

Any workaround?

[hoggy]

Datahand layout changing. Interesting.

Webwit uses Colemak, Hoggy uses Dvorak, and I just look at my Datahand box occasionally. I forgot if I asked Webwit if he thinks the layout change makes much of a difference with Datahand.

There was a guy that posted on GH a few times that claimed to be so old school Datahand tester, and he filed off the landing pads for the down stroke on Datahand. I forgot the layout he used, it starts with a "B" and it uses more keystrokes on the bottom row, which he said works better with Datahand because of it's design.

I wonder if most datahand users have swapped to a different layout?

Changing layouts is a change you need motivation for, but it's a change that doesn't cost much and will stay with you for a very long time. It's a good early step in dealing with RSI like issues. If a new layout and a kinesis advantage isn't enough, then it's seems reasonable to try a datahand. Jumping straight to a datahand might be a tough sell if you have to pay for it yourself - especially if your ability to continue in your current job looks shaky...

My guess is that users with a datahand using qwerty had them paid for by their company/insurance.

PS - I spend more time looking at my dh than actually using it.

[aegray]

I'm using qwerty on mine (one of the really old dh200 ones), but that's mainly because I can't sacrifice work productivity for the time it will take to relearn another layout - I got fast quickly enough with qwerty on it that I'm stuck somewhat now.

Offtopic - to those that have a more recent model, are the nap / caps lock key locations switched between hands from what they were on the old ones (left thumb down is nap, right thumb is shift)? Can you remap this so that nap is left thumb down?

[Icarium]

Well, I can't tell you whether it can be remapped or not but I have shift on the left and nas on the right.

I'm also reasonably fast with the standard layout already so apparently they did a good job making it accessible. I still think switching might be a good idea.
Do we have a somewhat common typing test that I could attempt to see where I stand?

[webwit]

Offtopic - to those that have a more recent model, are the nap / caps lock key locations switched between hands from what they were on the old ones (left thumb down is nap, right thumb is shift)? Can you remap this so that nap is left thumb down?

I don't think so, but there are two DH200 emulation modes, don't know what they do.

[dacc]

Another DataHand up on eBay -- asking price is $1750!

Seems like it's not an actual Pro II, but a modified Personal?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 500wt_1158

[off]

@ica; http://speedtest.10-fast-fingers.com is an option, no idea though. geekhack is down, but when back up that page on that diy datahand had a few references afair. Curious where you stand now, like 2/3 weeks in

[Icarium]

Just tried that really quick and I ended up with about 30 wpm which I find not excruciatingly slow with my old 90 on a normal keyboard with qwerty.

[off]

you mean that awkward thing you've typed on for most of your life, just 3x faster than what you've been getting used to for 2/3 weeks... not bad indeed.

[Burro Volando]

The keyboard layout I consider likely to be best on the DataHand keyboard is the Blickensderfer. The Blickensderfer typewriter can be googled, and I have seen them for sale on E-bay but have not checked lately. The typewriter was sold with QWERTY or the Blickenderfer layout, but if you wanted to buy the QWERTY version, they made you sign a statement that you knew you were purchasing an inferior key layout. (They were right, of course.) This was back around the 1890s and the early 1900s.

In my opinion, the Colemac layout is too close to QWERTY to be better than Dvorak on the DH. Under my standards, the objective should be to reduce the use of the North keys (because that is the most awkward movement on the DH but it is mostly only an issue with beginners) and thus increase the use of all the other keys. QWERTY increases the amount of work performed on the North keys (about 50% of the work is on the North row on the flat keyboard). Dvorak reduces that by emphasizing the home row (70% of the work is on the Home row), and the Blickenderfer does it more by emphasizing the South row (it puts about 70% of the work on the South row and well more than 90% of the work on the bottom two rows). The DataHand design makes concern about the layout less important than it is on the flat keyboard, so a lot of this is splitting hairs---at least for experienced users.

The DataHand has a much larger percentage of Dvorak users than the flat keyboard does, but they are still a fraction of the number of DataHand users who use QWERTY. That is just because most people want to stick with what they know when they are transitioning. I can produce no numbers to show how much better Dvorak is on the DH, but it is enough to make me glad I did not stick with QWERTY. I converted to Dvorak on the flat keyboard at least about six years before I got my first DataHand keyboard in 1992. I have used Dvorak on it from the beginning and contributed to the design of the DataHand Dvorak layout, though there is one detail I would have done differently if it had been up to me (I would have put the Back Tab somewhere else in a different mode). I was one of the first three users of the DataHand keyboard outside the company. I do not care at all about the short test speed on the DataHand keyboard though it is faster for me by a lot. The greatest value for me is in the marathon running comfort; it makes it possible to work as long as I need to without any stresses. Twelve hours of work or more are common.

[off]

The Blickensderfer
The greatest value for me is in the marathon running comfort; it makes it possible to work as long as I need to without any stresses. Twelve hours of work or more are common.

Nice background info on those layouts.
How does the built-in mouse emulation work for you? Or do you 'unlock' your hand and swap to a normal mouse for all those moments (small chance seeing how that ruins the appeal/ergonomics)

[webwit]

The assumption here is that the north row is less comfortable as the south row, and the south row is better than the down buttons. I don't agree. Tapping down is easier.

[Icarium]

Hm..I don't know. I probably haven't found the perfect hand position yet but pushing in (tapping down, normal switch) seems to be hard if you press of center which my pinkies do a lot so far. I definitely think that emphasizing the push-in and down switches would be helpful. Maybe I'll just try the Blickensdorfer or make up my own layout. There are plenty of optimizers out there.

How does the built-in mouse emulation work for you? Or do you 'unlock' your hand and swap to a normal mouse for all those moments (small chance seeing how that ruins the appeal/ergonomics)

The mouse emulation is a lot better than I feared. I'm still nowhere near as comfortable as with a normal mouse but I am getting better. Since you can use left index finger, right index finger or both there are basically three speed settings. I still find it somewhat uncomfortable to use it diagonally though.

[off]

Since you can use left index finger, right index finger or both there are basically three speed settings. I still find it somewhat uncomfortable to use it diagonally though.

And using left index for one straight direction and the right for the other to create a diagonal seems like a mindfsck..
left and right hand have different sensitivities?

[Icarium]

Yeah, left moves faster than right.
Moving diagonally is just a matter of pushing between the switches. I suppose it works fine it just feels weird somehow.

[aegray]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 500wt_1004

Does this mean that a refurb just sold for 1750? How expensive can these get?

[itlnstln]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 500wt_1004

Does this mean that a refurb just sold for 1750? How expensive can these get?

I bet they bought it just to turn around and sell it for $4,000.

[webwit]

I bet it didn't sell at all.

[kbdfr]

It did:
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0785295441

The seller even already left (sort of) feedback for the buyer:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... tForOthers

I have never used eBay before. How do I get paid? Do we have to ship first?

Considering the seller's naivety and the first feedback the buyer had received (scroll down):
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... llFeedback

one can expect some problems ahead

[hoggy]

At least the price makes me feel better.

[Burro Volando]

The price is minimally approaching the true value of the DataHand keyboard. The value could be placed at the value of avoiding a medical crisis over RSI, but for me it lies in the value of the increased hours I can work compared to the maximum hours that are possible for me to work on any other keyboard (about 4 hours) and it does include the normal overtime I standardly wok (depending partly on the underly details of the calculculation which is a longer exposition). There is also an increased efficiency component to the calculated value, but this efficiency is not based on the score on a ten minute speed test (that would be a goofy short-term and short-sighted standard). For me, in short, the DataHand value is about $30,000 annually if I was paid at an average wage for a keyboard worker. That means, I could lease my keyboard for $30,000 annually and still deliver a profit with it. Under my calculations, all other keyboards are a net negative if they were given to me for free at no cost.

Finally, I see that my earlier response to Webwit did not get into this thread somehow. The main point was that the most biologically natural movement of the human hand is the gripping motion. That is the movement needed to use the South keys on the DH. The downward pecking motion is much less natural, and the flicking motion is even less natural, but they are all a great improvement over the hand movement required on other keyboards. I do not now remember what else may have been said in the missing message, but I think it was a discussion of early keyboard history especially about the Blickensderfer company.

[Icarium]

No, it totally made it I remember those points and agree on most of them.

[webwit]

The main point was that the most biologically natural movement of the human hand is the gripping motion. That is the movement needed to use the South keys on the DH. The downward pecking motion is much less natural, and the flicking motion is even less natural

Still false assumptions to me. Place your fingers on your desk. What's more natural, tapping your fingers, or making "gripping" motions? Tapping for me. Gripping is more effort.

[Burro Volando]

Not to drag out the point, there are no assumptions; only a statement of fundamental biological fact: the human hand is designed through the course of evolution to grip things. Historically, no significant preservationally-necessary work has been performed by finger tapping, unless the drumming fingers of an impatient King should be considered a preservationally-important form of communication. Further, drumming the fingers on a desktop is not the same as typing. Even on a DataHand keyboard, typing requires more force than drumming the fingers on a flat surface.

However, if a person does less gripping and more work on a keyboard during the course of a typical day, the muscles of the hand can develop to support the work being done. Typing motions could come to feel more comfortable and more important than gripping motions for people who type.

Similarly, DataHand users do become more comfortable with the flicking (Northward) motions and the muscles and nerves accommodate themselves to the need to make that motion, even if it has never been an important work motion in the past. For many people, the sidewards motions on the DH are not comfortable when they start out. Few standard uses of the fingers require this kind of movement, unless a person plays the clarinet or a saxaphone, for example. With time, the sidewards motions become natural and fairly easy, certainly easier than having to move and float the hands to do the same work. Nonetheless, they are probably slightly less easy than gripping movements and downward (pecking) movements.

In sum, I still say that the Blick layout is likely to be better on the DH than the Dvorak layout (that I use and which emphasizes downward movements), and both are certainly better than the layouts requiring more Northward (flicking) movements and maybe even those requiring more sidewards movements.

The point is to base the conclusions on observations of the human hand in action, not on assumptions about anything, but in the end performance results from a large group of people using different layouts would be valuable to obtain. However, the more fruitful use of time at moment would focus on the differences between the DH (no matter what layout is used) and the greatly less adequate flat keyboard and its moderately ergonomic versions (because of the agonies of hand movement and hand float). The flat design and especially the QWERTY configuration are together a tragic monument to herdbound habit and lazy human nature, as well as to appalling failure of design vision among users, manufacturers and everyone else. Case rested.

To Icarium: the post that failed to get the thread failed because I got jammed up and failed to submit it, except that I did not realize the failure, and now I can't remember it well enough to recreate it.

[webwit]

Not to drag out the point, there are no assumptions; only a statement of fundamental biological fact: the human hand is designed through the course of evolution to grip things.

It's an interesting point to drag

The (IMO false) step you're making is that it consumes less effort. The human body is also designed to walk and run, yet it is easier to sit and tap your feet. We don't grip to make something effortless, we grip to hold on to something, and we engage to do so. Engagement is effort. Just imagine how tiring it would be to have to grip something for hours.

[Burro Volando]

The only sense in which it is less effort is the sense that the force required to activate the side keys around the perimeter of the key-well (North, South, East and West) is less on the DH than the force required to activate the down keys. But the point is not that it consumes less effort (apart from this design detail); the effort has to be equal to the work needed to activate the keys. The point is that movement southward is slightly more natural biologically than the downward movement (except that it is true that typists have become accustomed to the downward movement because of the work they do).

Originally, I expected the North movements to be less easy because the nerve endings in the fingernails would be less sensitive, but I find that is not an issue. My fingernails are as touch sensitive as the pads of my fingers. Nonetheless, the flicking motion is not as natural, and to improve leverage, the tall keys are valuable on the North.

In sum, the South keys and the Down keys are regarded as the most efficient to use because the movements are the most natural on those two keys. Thus, the key layouts that emphasize those keys are considered the best. The Blick layout uses them both better than the Dvorak layout (because it puts more than 90% of the work on the two lower rows and 70% on the bottom row, but more analysis is needed to fully understand the functional difference. Still needed is a full comparison of the work done by the side keys in both layouts.

Finally, it would be interesting to compare also the layout that Sholes came up with at the end of life just before he died. By then he knew that QWERTY badly needed to be improved and was not a good layout for efficiency (by then, too, mechanical improvements had made efficiency more important), but the way he improved it was through clustering the most used keys in the center of the keyboard (on all three rows) and deemphasizing the weakest fingers. He assumed most typists would work with their four or six strongest fingers (this was before the value of eight-finger touch typing had been advanced). It is possible that this Sholes deign could be worth study in relation to the DH.

Even more important in the end is the work assigned to the thumbs. Until the DH, all layouts failed to well utilize the thumbs, and most flat keyboard typists only use one thumb, simply parking the other. That is a serious waste of productive capacity.

[Icarium]

Hm. Why do you say that floating the hands is bad? Isn't that the normal way of typing that is taught even though resting the hands would be possible?

[Burro Volando]

Floating the hands is disastrously stressful, because it strains the arms, back, and neck to support the hands over the keyboard for long hours of work. It is the reason, I can no longer use a flat keyboard for more than four hours. The stresses become unbearable. The DH supports the hands on the palm pads enabling all the work to be done by the fingers. It completely eliminates the float issue enabling me to work as long as I need to, and i have worked for 18 hours (with minor breaks) many times.

[Icarium]

I have noticed that the down (or in) key is very hard to press of center. I seem to do that a lot with my pinkies, possibly bad hand posture. Does anybody have an idea how I could grease it? Preferably not with actual grease because that sounds messy.

EDIT:
Also, the most annoying thing about the Datahand so far are the palm pads. They feel and smell disgusting. I have put food wrap around them just so I don't want to wash my hands all the time anymore. I don't know what kind of plastic that is but it is horrible

[mSSM]

So is DataHand Systems still in business? On their website they state that they have issues with their supplier, but you can still submit orders for the DataHand Pro 2 for $1000. Still a bit pricey, but considering that that is such a special piece of engineering, I think the price is not overly expensive. I mean, people are willing to pay $500 for an HHKB Pro 2 with damping (which essentially acount to $200 for little rubber rings).