OrbiTouch Keyless Keyboard Review

robyn217 writes "When I last looked at strange, new keyboards (here's the previous thread here on slashdot), I thought I'd seen it all... not even close! I just reviewed a new keyless keyboard, called the OrbiTouch, and gave it a run for its money. It's literally made up of two humps--it reminds me of holding onto my knees rather a keyboard. To type or mouse, you need to move the humps around in a synchronized manner. It's twisted--but it's better for you to decide for yourself--here's the article, OrbiTouch Review: A Keyless Keyboard with lots of pictures. Think you'll give it a test drive? Will it survive the year?"

$695, that's nothing.....

[stuckatwork]

The Datahand system, reviewed here [extremetech.com] has a price of $1,295 USD.

Wow. 'Taint cheap, eh?

Re:ugh.

[Angry White Guy]

MS did not create, nor implement the first natural keyboard. Check out the PCD--Maltron keyboard [teleprint.com].

Re:Make it a single ball for 1 hand

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a half keyboard that uses chords of left-hand keys and the space bar to give you access to right-hand keys. Costs $300, but it seems like the sort of thing that could be done just as well in software if one were so inclined.
http://www.halfkeyboard.com/halfkeyboard/index.htm l [halfkeyboard.com]

Re:DVORAK

[asherh]

QWERTY wasn't designed to slow typing, it was designed to move the hammers for letters that would frequently be typed in sequence further apart. The further apart two hammers are, the faster they can be used in sequence since each hammer has to fall back less far before it is out of jamming range of the next hammer.

The utility of new layouts like Dvorak is dubious at best, giving only a small improvement after a lot of training, and causing problems when one has to switch between different machines with different keyboards.

Personally, I'll give up my clicky-clacky QWERTY IBM model M keyboard when they prise it from my cold, dead, fingers.

Next up: Carpal elbow

[Anonymous Coward]

AP, New York Despite the misnomer, the term Carpal Elbow and Carpal shoulder are starting to be used frequently in connection with the use of keyboards in which the hands and wrists make very little movement themselves

"The Carpal Tunnel is actually a structure of tissue surrounding the nerves that pass through the wrist - There is no Carpal Tunnel either at the elbow or shoulder, though similar tissue exist to protect the nerves."

Re:ugh.

[Zeriel]

Misconception alert!
It was not designed to slow you down. It was designed so that you rarely typed two adjacent keys in a row--which is what caused jams, not typing speed.

Empirical evidence suggests Dvorak keyboards are no faster than Sholes keyboards (and no slower, either!) given equal training.

Re:ugh.

[2short]

"Letters used frequently together are placed so that they are 'logically' next to eachother."

No. Qwerty is designed specifically so that letters commonly used together are seperated horizontally.

"Most commonly used letters are placed on the 'home' and top row and least commonly used letters are placed on the bottom."

Definitely No. Right index finger home key 'J' is third most uncommon letter. (beaten by 'q' (top row) and 'z'), home key 'k' is fith most uncommon. Their are 8 home keys, and they contain only 2 of the top 8 letters, about what you'd expect assigning the keys randomly. Don't even get me started on semi-colon.

Beyond seperating common pairs horizontally, I don't know what factors went into designing Querty, but speeding up typing does not appear to have been one of them. While the designer may not have been trying to slow you down, he wasn't trying to speed you up, and he was trying to do other things. From where I sit (using his stupid layout) that amounts to "Designed to slow you down".

My fave keyless keyboard is speech recognition.

[Robotron2084]

The idea of all these crazy keyboard designs completely misses the point. Of course there is a place for new and innovative keyboards for accessibility reasons, but if you want to reduce repetitive strain injury, why not try speech recognition? I'm dictating this right now, and boy my hands feel fine!

Naturally speech recognition doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough to be much faster and user friendly than a keyboard. And at $695.00 you can save yourself a lot of money!

Re:WPM?

[robyn217]

You know, I did consider giving WPM benchmarks using this keyboard and all of the others that I've tested--but I thought that it would be far too subjective. If it takes me a long time to adapt to a particular keyboard, it may or may not be the same for you. It's a tough thing to generalize. Anyone agree or disagree? I can always add these stats to future keyboard reviews that I write.

Testing a keyboard for a month would mean that I could only write a max of 12 reviews a year. Tough to pay the bills on that! :) But, I do use each keyboard exclusively for a few days (if at all possible) before I write a review.

Note that I still use the SafeType vertical keyboard [extremetech.com] and the TouchStream keyboard [extremetech.com]--I hope to follow up my last round of reviews with a "longer term" perspective (as you requested).