| 25. March 2002. Tomi Engel |  |
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Find out about the better keyboard layout - the Dvorak keyboard - and learn about yet another invention which gets ignored since 1940 due to the common "worse is better" attitude of humankind.
Personally I switched to this layout back in early 1999 and have readjusted the keycaps on one classic NeXT, one NeXT ADB, one Apple USB Pro and one Apple PowerBook keyboard. Since all, besides the classic NeXT keyboard, were using identical keycaps for every row, the results are perfect Dvorak keyboards.
Fig. 1: NeXT keyboard with Dvorak layout
From my own experience I can only support all claims made by other Dvorak evangelists: Switching is not really hard and touchtyping comes more naturally.
Other devices
There are some other interesting things when it comes to input devices. Sadly most of them are quite expensive because of the low volume in which they get produced.
Fig. 2: SpaceMouse in black
The SpaceMouse is a 3D input device which uses a dislocation measuring system inside the devices cap to calculate rotation and translation. It was originally developed for controling robots on a DLR space mission but has found its use in all fields of 3D application.
Fig. 3: Datahand Device
Another interesting device I stumbled across is the one you can see in fig. 3. It is a product of Datahand Inc. and resembles a handrest-pad with integrated switches. While it sounds well interesting it doesn't seem like the company is very eager to sell those devices.
