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Comment by hexbinencoded | Hacker News Reader

I laugh when I read this because the DataHand was so much better but inefficiently manufactured and badly-priced. Five motions per finger well, macros, and mouse control 20-something years ago.

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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

[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.

Have you used one? I have always wondered how people find the side to side finger motions to be, in terms of strain and ergonomics. It feels like an unnatural movement. To be clear I've never used one myself.

It's not a DataHand, but here's someone typing on a modern DIY version of one [1]. The side motions don't look too unnatural to me.

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

Yeah, most of the heavily used keys are mapped to north, south and down. There are a few letters mapped to side keys, but they're mostly on the first two fingers. The first finger can do either side direction fairly easily, while the middle finger can do the inward (toward the thumb) direction a bit more easily than the outer direction.

I used to own one and have probably written about it before; the side to side is not very natural, but no big problem because the fingertip is down in a well with buttons wrapped close around it, so it’s a small movement, and the way the key mechanism works is backwards to normal - instead of pushing all the way until a contact clicks, the keys are magnetically latched at rest and you push them away from that state, meaning it registers at the start of moving not the end so again small movements and you don’t push hard into a resistive surface with the side of your finger to make sure it registers, you flick a gently sprung thing. Look at the keyboard layout too, shown at the top[1] and the pinkies don’t have sideways movement for writing English letters, and the other fingers only go one way, the easier way, for letters.

I didn’t get used to it to use it exclusively; it’s too tuned for prose, extracting your hand carefully to use a mouse, not having an easy way to type anything one handed while holding a mouse or phone (e.g. hold a device type the serial number), awkward arrow keys and less convenient numbers, see “NAS” (Number And Symbol) mode on the diagram entered by right-thumb-down.

It’s been long enough now that I’d like to play with one again, for a bit of novelty.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/DataHand...

I actually prefer number entry on the datahand. They're such a reach from home position on a normal keyboard, but they're just as easy to hit as anything else, with a datahand-like.

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