As most of you probably know, the layout of the QWERTYUIOP keyboards 99% of the eastern world uses were designed with the keylayout they have because of a need to keep the original manual typewriters from jamming and not from a usability standpoint. Those of us who are not accomplished touch-typists would probably agree that the layout is not the best. There have been attempts to modernize the design of keyboard, with approaches like the Dvorak layout and novel approaches like the vertical layout and the chording keypad. I’ve investigated most of these at one time or another (ok, aside from the vertical one) and am still interested in a better way to get text into the computer. I found a new one today, the frogpad. The basic premise is similar to the dvorak keyboard – make the layout based on your finger’s proximity to the most frequently used letters in us english, but it also combines aspects of the chording keyboards in that some characters require the press of more than one key.

I’m interested enough in this one to want to try it. The one downside with all of these though is price – since no one buys these solutions in significant numbers, they cost $$$, most of them cost more than $150 and some are as high as $250. Now I’ll confess, I once dropped $150 on an Apple Extended (the old, excellent model) but I don’t want to drop so much cash on a Frogpad without being able to try it first, so I’m stuck with keyboard envy and the hope I run across one of these on someone’s desk. Anyone else using a novel keyboard?