nice
okay so this is the data hand personal
it's a keyboard it's weird there's no getting around that but it's weird for a
reason it's more ergonomic more comfortable and can even make you a
faster typer or so they claim so did data on systems go out of business
because this is an awful idea a bad
product or is this bizarre board from
1995 the absolute best input device you
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like many modern ergonomic keyboards the data hand takes a split board approach
it has two modules that can be freely positioned however you like according to
your own personal neck connected by an 18-inch d-sub cable that you'll have to
buy an extension for if you want to take advantage of the quarter-inch threads on
the bottom of the modules like if you want to mount them to your chair or to
the included laplander at its core the data hand aims to reduce the amount of
movement and force required to register a keystroke it's designed so that your
hands are resting comfortably on these cushy palm rests placing very little
strain on the carpal tunnel muscles and instead of having your fingers curling
and contorting in unnatural ways to reach keys the data hand has individual
wells for each digit where each keystroke
requires only a half inch of travel for your fingers and each finger can press
down or in any of the four cardinal
directions the switches are optical with the keys
relying on magnets to snap back into place they're super sensitive though to
the point where accidental key presses are really hard to avoid and sometimes
even when your hands are just resting on them you'll suddenly get a bunch of s's going across your screen more on the
learning curve in a minute but as for ergonomics having each finger do less
work while moving in many directions other than one repetitive stroke
is a definite plus each module can be
adjusted for different hand sizes by raising tilting or rocking the key wells
and by choosing between small and large palm rests at the time of ordering so
it's ergonomic as heck but can it help you type faster
it seems like it could in theory but the question is how long would it
take you to get there it should be used to
control a giant mech yeah there's there's ps2 on the other side of that
okay we're going to LTT Store.com that's my task i want to go to monkey type
that's delete that's restart no this is oh that's back this is
incredibly difficult how do i get to blue mode
there's another typo oh god over
no no i did it well that's a terrible mouse
experience can i stop now yeah you can still
yeah i never want to use that again despite it being a completely different
typing paradigm the designers did try
and make it familiar the layout is derived from the qwerty layout with most
key clusters corresponding to letters that you're used to hitting with that
same finger however it's not a perfect translation and you can see why
t y n and b on a regular keyboard are kind of in no man's land so these have
to be moved to other random fingers which definitely takes some getting used
to same goes with symbols enjoy learning to type in apostrophe with your left
hand's middle finger then you've got the thumb clusters
they've got modifiers for switching layers not unlike pressing shift on a
qwerty keyboard except there's four layers
granted one of those is a mouse which is awful please god no but at least it's
there for people who need it but when combined with the atypical layout all of
this makes the whole thing pretty damn alien when you first sit down with
it to be frank jesse who typically types that between 120 and 130 words per
minute on a qwerty and got to around 40 words spread on an ergodox after a day
of usage tried the data hand and after a half day their best score was just three
words per minute you just can't have someone on your payroll typing that
slowly it's it's bad in data hands own
advertising they say that it only takes a short time to get up to speed on the
data hand but a short time is relative
this guy who ran a data hand as his daily driver back in 99 said it took him
over a month to get up to speed and that was after actually taking time off work
to get used to it that's a pretty steep cost but then again can't put a price on
health except in the states except in the states
so let's say you're sold should you rush out and buy
your very own data hand that's tricky because the company stopped selling them
in 2008 well how about secondary markets
ebay craigslist if you read it
if you're lucky the boards are out there but they can be hard to find we only got
this one because someone donated to us completely out of the blue after being
interested in it for years but maybe there's another way
a small but very dedicated group is looking to revive the spirit of the data
hand with their own projects like ben grover's law board an open source
keyboard you can 3d print and build yourself here's ben typing at 120 words
per minute on one which is three times faster than the average person can do on
a standard qwerty all without wrist extension and ulnar deviation i have to
admit part of me really wants to get into this but maybe the data hand failed
for a reason without a public statement from the company or a reply to my
linkedin message to the founder we can only speculate on what led to this
curious keyboard's demise but what we do know is that this device targeted a
relatively narrow demographic and cost between 500 and 1300 dollars depending
on which model you bought and when which is really expensive even for ergo
keyboards which are often in the 400 range today this means that data hand
relied on a limited number of sales with one core product plus a few wacky
accessories like the data chair but in
my opinion the learning curve must have been a big contributor to the low demand
you needed some serious issues to justify investing the time and the money
required for this ultimate ergonomic solution but today today maybe you just
need to be a nerd for my part i'm really interested in this concept but i'd like
to see some changes like perhaps an integrated trackball mouse for the
people who need it instead of this cartesian bullspit i hate the mouse
and maybe a more optimized layout that doesn't even try to be qwerty because
it's already ridiculous to learn anyway so you might as well just use something
that i don't know puts all the vowels on your strongest fingers or something but
for everyone else who needs an ergonomic solution that's not
so life-changing just get a redox moonland or something
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so thanks for watching guys if you like this video we have a bunch of other weird keyboard reviews check out the one
that has no keys at all that was fun to learn