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by DavidVoid 2077 days ago
It was definitely ahead of it's time and it's a shame there's no commercially available product like it today.

The Azeron gaming keypad [1] has a similar design but it's mainly intended for gaming so you'd have to get two of them and do some remapping to use it as a proper keyboard.

I think the lalboard [2] and the other DIY efforts in this thread [3] are probably the closest thing to a modern DataHand right now.

Here's someone typing at 120 WPM on a lalboard [4]. It looks so effortless when compared to QWERTY [5].

I do wish we'd start to see some more mass produced DataHand-like designs. I've never used one myself but it does seem like it'd be comfortable to use.

[1] https://www.azeron.eu/

[2] https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.800

[3] https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMhOIgrdeE0

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Ukh74gJYo

1 comments

[4] That's me! :) It is quite comfortable to type on. And it's actually great for mouse+kb gaming too. I have 20 keys right at my fingertips, and I typically map all 3 modifiers to the thumb. Although I do recommend more of a straight across asdf (backwards/left/right/forward) movement scheme (or aoeu for those of us of the dvorak persuasion).

The 120WPM was a bit of a cherry-picked example. 95-100WPM is more of a typical average speed for me.