alt Hacker NewsAny QWERTY or QWERTY-inspired keyboard (layout) is silly.
Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...
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My experience switching layout is poor. I touch typed Qwerty at around 75 WPM. I switched to Colemak, and after a month or so of Monkeytype I am back at around 75 WPM but didn't gain significant speed. I never had serious wrist pain, so I can't say Colemak helped with that.
After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from Qwerty + peeking (and sometimes avoiding pinky) to Other layout + touch typing.
My only gain with Colemak is that typing feels smoother than Qwerty, but I can't honestly recommend anyone the switch. Using other computers, which are all in Qwerty, is now unconfortable.
This opinion is so quaint that it makes me smile.
For me, the #1 feature of the Advantage2 is ortho. Everything else is a distant second. I don't understand how anyone can use anything but ortho.
Yes, another layout would make your fingers travel even less, but ortho lets you reduce a lot of seeking/travel without learning anything new.