Dvorak conversion

So I picked up a keyboard from Asus Parts, to try a Dvorak conversion. I converted a while back and had been waiting to swap it out.

The keys pop out real easily by pressing here with a small screwdriver.




The reseting of the keys was just as easy, however, it is not without a couple issues.

First the big one. For those who have taken a keyboard apart will know what I mean. There are 6 keys that cannot drop in because of different positioned attachment points, ie the key underside is 90 degrees to the right. The keys affected in dvorak position are the following; G,I,D,H,X,B. The rest are all fine.

In order to place keys correctly in these positions I had to strip the letters off.
Because of this at this time I have 6 blank keys, but they all fall center board so it kind of looks interesting. It'll also force me to type a lot more by instinct instead of being lazy. I don't know if I'll label them as I've always had a soft spot for those blank keyboards.



The blanked out keys haven't absorbed the plastic cream yet so they're a bit chalky, with a bit of use this will go away.

All in all it took me about thirty minutes, and hopefully I'll go back to less typos...

Oh and once again the Asus shipping was very fast. Actually when I saw the return address as RMA dept. I thought for a second I might be pulling out a GPU today.

 

What program did you use to remap the keys?

 

XP and Vista both have remapping options, it's the Region and Language setting area in the control panel, it's a one click built in remap.

XP
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/keyboardlayout.aspx
VISTA
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/dvorak.aspx

Once and a while though, you'll run into a game that will need to be remapped.

 

Oh, cool... I remapped keys individually with KeyTweak to make myself media buttons out of the right Alt, [whateverfunkymenubutton], and Ctl. Didn't know that windows actually had a useful utility that came with it! But it only changes it for regional types, which is good if you are not used to qwerty or just hate it.

We need to create a new typing system anyway. qwerty was designed to slow typists down.

 

That's the whole idea behind DVORAK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

 

I am not really good at touch-typing yet but I was playing with the idea of converting my keyboard to DVORAK myself.
I think I have the benefit of not being to accustomed to QWERTY which will make it easier for me to switch.
I am thinking of buying some black key stickers to put over my QWERTY keyboard.
When I am getting better at DVORAK touch-typing I will definitely blank my keys. Those blank keyboards look really awesome!!!

@Hollywood: How did you strip the letters of? Do you mind giving me a small tutorial? ... and what is plastic cream?

 

To remove the letters I just gently scratched them with a small x-acto blade. Under good light can see a little glossy covering on the letter, once that is off they'll sand easily. I used a little wet sand paper, 320grit, but sanded with hand cream, (just to make it a bit slicker).

As for the plastic cream, it's some old boater's cream, the label vaporized a long time ago. It was just used for vinyl protection, but I suspect you could get away with using a bit of silicon lube, which is something I might try in a bit, mind you this is really only to match the sheen of the other keys.

Also I recommend doing this on a spare keyboard so you don't get stranded if something goes wrong, Asus parts has them for $20.

 

Very informative. Thanks a lot, I'll try that and tell you how it goes!!!

 

lol! All this time (for 14+ years) I thought that the dvorak system was the Russian keyboard layout! I just enabled it in Windows and will try it out. Read the article, looks great.

 

Same here. At first I thought DVORAK was Russian, too.

 

Not to be confused with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonín_Dvořák
either, or the dude from PC magazine.

Besides, wouldn't Cyrillic be a bit more appropriate for Russian, ohhh the horrors of modern schooling... :twitcy:

 

Yes it would, but it just doesn't sound Russian at all!