August Dvorak invented the alternate Dvorak keyboard in an attempt to reduce the learning time for learning touch-typing, and to reduce the ‘distance that the fingers had to travel for doing the same amount of typing. The fingers have to travel2D times less on a Dvorak keyboard! The main reason is that the most commonly typed keys are immediately under the fingers (rather than in the Qwerty, where you have to move away often from the home keysasdf and ;Ikj. When using any typing software, the very first time you have to specify the keyboard layout (QWERTY or Dvorak) that you wish to work with.
With Dvorak, one should be able to reduce the learning time considerably. And guess what? Windows allows to you change the layout of your keyboard to Dvorak! In Windows XP, go to ‘Control panel I Regional Languages and Options I Languages I Details I Installed Services I Add |Input language (US English) and Layout (Dvorak)’. This brings out a small keyboard icon in the taskbar called the Language bar. You can now right-click this icon to obtain the choices for the Qwerty or the Dvorak keyboard. (In Windows 95/98/Me/20DO go to ‘Control panel’, double-click ‘Keyboard I Language Tab I Properties I United States Dvorak’)
