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Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsAnybody make the plunge with a keyboard with blank keys? What about alt keyboard layouts?
I'm probably going to be getting a WASD keyboard real soon. I'm leaning towards going with blank keys.
I'm marginally good with qwerty. I know by memory where all letters are, type about 60 wpm, but sometimes I have to check my number row or punctuation characters.
To break this habit I'm considering a blank keyboard, knowing I can reference an image if I really get stuck.
Also, I keep hearing about Dvorak and Colemak. I'm also heavily considering learning Dvorak first, and a blank key keyboard would be nice so I don't have to swap key caps because I guarantee having keycaps in qwerty while typing in dvorak would drive me insane from an OCD perspective.
Has anybody embarked down this path and want to share insight. Curiosity is driving this more than anything. Worse case is I buy labeled keycaps for $50 if I don't like the blank keycaps, right?
6 Answers
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsAny teachers here want to speak on this professionally? I think Nick Pettit has this keyboard without any labels if I saw Twitter correctly, and I thought Kenneth Love has this keyboard too from a different thread I read? I'm also up to other options, just trying to align myself to be more crutch-free. Anyone else?
Clayton Tevebaugh
7,617 PointsI think a blank keyboard is the ultimate in cool. A great option may be a <a href="http://kbcovers.com/touch-typing-keyboard-cover">blank keyboard overlay.</a> I would like to get one for my macbook pro so I can stress the learning of my keys. One other plus to an overlay is its a cheap option to reconfigure your keyboard to help learn dvorak by buying a overlay with that layout. I'm sure they have colemak overlays too.
Clayton Tevebaugh
7,617 Pointshttp://kbcovers.com/touch-typing-keyboard-cover There is an option for a keyboard cover. I currently use a moshi one to keep my keys clean. Sadly they only make clear covers though.
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsYeah I figure what's the worst if I don't like my choice with a mechanical keyboard. I spend $50 to replace my key caps with printed legends on them. Not the end of the world in the long run. I think I'll like it.
That's a sweet option for dvorak on Mac. I wondered about that.
roxannecarlson
8,131 PointsI wear all the letters and numbers off of my keyboards, so keyboards without wouldn't bother me at all.
Arley McBlain
2,448 PointsI learned Colemak! It was kind of hard. I started with my phone to memorize (it's the keyboard you look at always). I worked on muscle memory on my machine at night for a couple months, then went all in. Took a while to get up to speed, but now my pinkies hurt less. My motivation was my children who I don't want learning Qwerty. I love that WASD lets you plug a Colemak board into a Qwerty computer and it works :)
Arley McBlain
2,448 PointsI learned Colemak! It was kind of hard. I started with my phone to memorize (it's the keyboard you look at always). I worked on muscle memory on my machine at night for a couple months, then went all in. Took a while to get up to speed, but now my pinkies hurt less. My motivation was my children who I don't want learning Qwerty. I love that WASD lets you plug a Colemak board into a Qwerty computer and it works :)