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I knew a guy that had a DVORAK keyboard on his desktop at home. He bragged about how great it was and blah, blah, blah but man he couldn't type worth a damn on the keyboards on the school computers. I asked him why he subjected himself to such aggravation by causing muscle and nerve memory confusion trying to use work/school qwerty keyboards and some extremely uncommon dvorak at home.......it was like trying to talk common sense with a brick.
It's for this reason I gave up trying to learn colemak. As annoying as the qwerty typing format is on hand ergonomics, it doesn't seem to be worth it to try to learn a format for a keyboard type that nobody uses, especially when people seem content to peck away at 20 words a minute on their phones these days. I do 70WPM on qwerty and am fine with it.
I also use windows 8.1 and have no problem with it. It's actually made it easier for my father to navigate and use his computer and my mother likes it just fine too. It's not perfect but I don't see why people loathe it so much. I like that one press of the windows key will get me to the metro screen pretty much no matter what I'm doing. In fact that's what I told my father... when in doubt press the windows key to access your screen to choose what you wanna use. I've put the control panel on there, and all the programs I use... with a little tweaking it's actually quite pleasant to use the metro screen.
It's also faster and leaner than 7 as well. I can understand why some don't like it though... but the desktop is going the way of the dinosaur and touchscreen laptops are becoming more common so I have no problem with microsoft continuing down this path. People have always complained about windows and it's hard to please everyone. I myself will never get rid of my desktop/HTPC and look forward to building an 8-core haswell-e system hopefully later this year.
PC MAKER HP has announced that it is dropping Windows 8 in favour of its predecessor, Windows 7.
Advertising on the HP website declares, "Windows 7 is back.... Due to popular demand" The claim is more than just a marketing statement. HP is now preloading most of its PCs with Windows 7 as standard, with Windows 8 having been relegated to an optional customization.
The PC-maker’s campaign to bring Windows 7 “back by popular demand,” sparked comments that it was funneling attention into the dated Microsoft platform because customers are rejecting Windows 8. HP says that couldn’t be further from the truth....
It's probably 99% of the users using QWERTY. I wouldn't mind learning to type on a DVORAK keyboard if I knew that that's everything that I would use from now on. But there's no point in learning that layout just to get confused when I use a different computer at work or somewhere else.
I use a DVORAK keyboard when I'm at home or in my office and a QWERTY keyboard when I'm in meetings or traveling (since my laptops have QWERTY keyboards). I enjoy the extra efficiency when I can. It's not confusing at all. I had spent decades on QWERTY and can now switch back and forth. It's similar to switching between an automatic transmission and a standard transmission.
I'm looking to buy a All in One Computer. How can I avoid Windows 8? Does Samsung, Sony, or Dell offer Windows 7 options?
I got Windows 7 from Dell last summer but they say the closer you get to April, the less likely you'll be able to get it. At least, that's the last I heard. Those stories also change with the times.
I use a DVORAK keyboard when I'm at home or in my office and a QWERTY keyboard when I'm in meetings or traveling (since my laptops have QWERTY keyboards). I enjoy the extra efficiency when I can. It's not confusing at all. I had spent decades on QWERTY and can now switch back and forth. It's similar to switching between an automatic transmission and a standard transmission.
I use DVORAK 100% of the time when using a full keyboard (I don't bother when using an on screen keyboard that I can't touch type on).
I've been touch typing DVORAK for ~10 years, and just use regular QWERTY keyboards and set the input method in Windows to DVORAK. All of my servers, laptop, towers, even the external keyboard on my Android phone are setup this way (using External Keyboard Helper Pro on the phone).
I can still type QWERTY, but it's really not an issue since any Windows computer can support multiple keyboards with little issue. I run the language bar on the HTPC (defaulted to QWERTY), so everyone else in the family can use it normally, and when I sit down I switch to DVORAK. If I need to do any heavy typing on my wife's laptop, I jump into languages and switch to DVORAK in 20 seconds, and put it back when I'm done.
If I had to support 100's of computers, I'd just grab a hard wired USB DVORAK keyboard, and plug it in when I sat down.
I generally like to try new things, but being forced to use them is completely different. I started with Packard Bell Navigator (anybody remember that?). After about three or four months of that I found out how to turn it off. Then it was Windows 95...98...XP...Vista...7...and 8, not to mention the various MacOS GUIs in school, or the almost infinite number of desktop environments and window managers in Linux that I've tried (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, FVWM2, FVWM95, Afterstep, Enlightenment, etc., etc.), and environments I've had on the mobile devices I've owned over the years (Windows Mobile CE, iOS, Android 4.0.3).
Excluding the minimalist window managers, the most difficult interface to date for me has been Windows 8. My 17.3", non-touchscreen laptop came preloaded with it, and I've hated it from the start. Lucky for me, I found and installed Classic Start Menu, which solved most of my difficulties.
Microsoft erred in making the move to the Metro UI across all interfaces. The tasks I use a keyboard and mouse/track pad for are not the same ones for which I use a touch interface on my phone. I don't want to use a interface designed for mobile devices on my laptop or desktop. Furthermore, the desktop/laptop is becoming the domain of the power user and office; most other people have switched to their phones or tablets for most of their computing needs. You would think Microsoft would realize this, but no. They totally bastardized what was a fine operating system by conforming it to mobile devices.
The reality is, though, that most GUIs are moving in this direction: Ubuntu Unity. KDE 4. I used to blame Steve Jobs and Apple, but now I don't know who to mean-mug.
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