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The TouchStream LP

So, I spent £250 on a keyboard.

Here's how it happened. I was typing happily -- working on a program, my final year project. I gradually became aware of a pain in my right thumb. That particular digit is of great importance to my typing, as it is used for the spacebar. Oddly, the pain seemed to be exactly where the thumb and spacebar made contact.

I ignored it, but the problem did not go away. By the next day I had decided that I needed a break from typing, because the pain was rather distracting and it would be much better if I let it heal. When, the following day, my thumb was just as bad, I realised that I was going to need another way to type.

Introducing The TouchStream

Here's the manufacturer's page, with pictures and other fun stuff:

Fingerworks Main Page

I had seen the TouchStream LP before. It had been enticing then, but not enticing to quite the amount they charge. However, I was now faced with a crippling inability to work, and "zero force" typing sounded like exactly what my thumb needed. I sought out all the reviews I could find. This was a product almost universally praised, with one caveat: it would take time to learn how to use. Well, some ability to type would be better than none, and my thumb would be able to recover in the meantime. Also, I could finally be rid of the last trace of Microsoft in my life: I had been addicted to their natural keyboards for some years.

It was time for a change. So, I ordered mine from The Back Store. This was on a Friday afternoon, and it arrived the next morning. Definitely no room to complain there. I unwrapped my new toy, plugged it into a USB port, and began to experiment.

Slow Starts

Mousing was relatively straightforward. Typing, as expected, was slow. It's very different to typing on a standard keyboard. You genuinely don't need to use any force at all. The slightest touch is sufficient to trigger a keypress. And yet, miraculously, you can rest multiple fingers on the surface without triggering anything. This is clever stuff.

Let's talk speeds. On my normal keyboard, I can top 100wpm, as measured by typera.tk. On the TouchStream, I was initially managing something like 20wpm, after mistakes. Unsurprisingly, this was rather frustrating. After a day or so of using the keyboard, I came to an important conclusion.

My touch typing simply wasn't good enough. I didn't use all my fingers properly. Most of them, yes, but I moved my hands in order to cut down on pinky use. Hand movement on the TouchStream is somewhat problematic. With practice, yes, you can move your hands and return them to the correct position. But it is much better not to do so, and indeed the whole keyboard is designed so that you don't have to do so. More on that when I talk about gestures. Now, I had read about the Dvorak layout. Arguments about speed aside, there is one important fact about the layout: it increases home row usage, and minimises hand and finger movement. The way forward seemed clear. I would learn the Dvorak layout, and learn it properly, using all my fingers. I would become a good touch typist.

The TouchStream has a handy gesture sequence to allow you to change its layout, making it extremely easy to switch to Dvorak or Qwerty as the desire takes you. I switched to Dvorak, and hit entirely new levels of frustration. Ten words per minute and lower. I persevered. After few weeks my head was full of Dvorak, and my fingers were gradually catching on. I reached twenty or thirty words per minute; not fast, but with the other advantages offered by the keyboard, enough to be productive.

Now, a month after buying the keyboard, I have reached a respectable speed at last: 60 words per minute. Whether I continue to improve or not, there is no way I will go back to a normal keyboard.

In Need Of A Thesaurus

There aren't enough superlatives to describe how much comfort is gained in switching from a normal keyboard to a TouchStream. "Zero force" typing is beautiful. No more key clicks, no more stress on those fingers. Just silent fingers dancing on a smooth, slightly springy surface. My thumb recovered after a week or so, and has not complained since. And that is far from the end of the story. Your mousing arm will thank you every day, because it no longer has to make repetitive reaching motions for the mouse. Your hands will thank you, too, because there is no longer any need to reach for the shift key, or any modifier key. By default, you hold shift by dropping all four fingers of one hand onto the surface. Although this seems odd, you will soon get used to it, and you will love it.

It doesn't end there, either. Everything about the keyboard is designed so that you no longer have to reach for anything. You don't need to use the arrow keys any more; simply drop two fingers of your left hand and slide them. Awkward key combinations are replaced with gestures that can be performed anywhere on the keyboard.

Productivity improvements go hand-in-hand. Mousing is no longer something that requires you to take a hand off the keyboard. It becomes an integral part of the way you interact with your computer. I have spent a large part of my life editing code, and like many programmers I prided myself on being able to use keyboard shortcuts to the full, never slowing myself down by reaching for the mouse. Well, reaching for the mouse is no longer necessary, and using the mouse is anything but slow. It makes editing code much more straightforward.

Gestures are easy to remember, easy to execute, easy on the hands, and incredibly customisable. In fact, the whole keyboard is heavily customisable. You can assign any key to any function, as well as moving keys around. There are three mini-layouts available: number pad, programmer's pad and international pad. You can modify these to do anything you want, using them to temporarily modify what a selection of keys do. With a bit of work, you can make the TouchStream so perfectly attuned to your needs that it is hard to see how you could possibly interact with your computer more efficiently.

It Isn't All Good

There are downsides. If you get a TouchStream, you will have to learn to type again. If you don't switch to Dvorak, you should be able to build up speed more quickly than I did; but in the long run, I think the switch is advisable. As it's so easy to change the layout, this is something that you can decide for yourself.

The software for customising the keyboard is not wonderful. The fact that it runs on Mac and Linux is a big bonus (although 64-bit Linux users are currently out of luck), but it's clunky and not entirely straightforward at times. If you're a programmer you will find it helps to dive into the (very nice) XML file format and make changes there. You will need to put in quite a number of hours if you want to get the thing fully customised. If not, well, the default settings have been well chosen, and should be useful for most people.

The device itself, although well-built, has a couple of design flaws. The two halves are joined by a ribbon cable, and nothing more. All it would take to break it is a moderately hard twist. There is no way to twist it like that while it's resting on its stand, but you'll have to be careful if you move it about. The USB cable connects directly to the edge of one of the halves, without anything to alleviate stress. It's another weak point.

Conclusion

These are wonderful devices, but they're not for everyone. Pay close attention the description of the amount of learning you'll need to do to get the most out of one of these, and the amount of customisation required to get it just right. But it's not a toy for someone with too much time on their hands, either. It offers the dual advantages of reduced stress on your hands and arms and increased productivity.

Do I recommend that you spend your hard-earned cash on one? That depends. Considered against the price of a new PC, these really aren't all that expensive. But if you already get everything you want from your system, there isn't any call for a TouchStream.

If you work on the computer a lot, though, and feel that your productivity might benefit or your hands might enjoy the extra comfort, it's worth thinking about. Computer geeks, designers, engineers; in fact, anyone who considers themselves to be a heavy computer user should think about it. The potential benefits are huge.

I'm certainly keeping mine. In fact, I'm seriously tempted to buy another one, so I have a spare. Normal keyboards and mouses just won't do the job any more.

PostScript

Well, it's now a year and a half, more or less, since I bought my first TouchStream. If you've visited the Fingerworks page you'll have noticed that they're no longer in business. (The word on the street is that they were bought by Apple). So, looking back, was my decision a good one?

The answer is yes, yes, and yes. In fact shortly after Fingerworks disappeared I bought a second TouchStream keyboard on ebay to use at my first real job. (Programming, of course). It cost more than the new one had, and I was really quite hard up for cash at the time (moving to London is not cheap!). But I didn't mind in the least.

Long experience has now shown that TouchStream is, for me at least, vastly superior to the standard keyboard-and-mouse combination. I wouldn't use anything else for serious work.

It's just a shame you can't buy them any more.

I'm eagerly awaiting the next development in this sort of technology. It's likely to be cheaper than a second-hand TouchStream, for one thing! And there are clearly further possibilities to be explored.

Oh, and I can get around 80 words per minute out of the TouchStream these days. As a programmer there's rarely any pressing need to type that quickly, so it's more than enough.

FAQ

Can I rest my hands on the keyboard?

Yes. Only single finger taps are counted as key presses; if you rest your fingers on the home row, that won't do anything.

Can I play games?

Yes, although depending on the game this might take some customisation of the keyboard or some extra practice. The keyboard has a "game mode" designed to help play modern games. The fact that there are no physical keys makes it hard to respond to game events as quickly and reliably as you might like. However, I managed to play Doom 3 without too much of a decrease in my zombie-killing ability. Indeed, it's a different experience to playing with mouse and keyboard and is quite entertaining.

I have heard that gestures and combined mousing come in handy for games like World of Warcraft.

However, the bottom line is that, as far as I can tell, hardcore gamers will be disappointed. The only games that could benefit from the TouchStream are those which would benefit from a keyboard with more keys than a normal keyboard provides. Then, gestures can be used for extra functions.

Does learning Dvorak make it impossible to use a Qwerty keyboard?

No. I'm just as fast as I was on a Qwerty keyboard, after my brain has had a few seconds to figure out what's going on. It's much like learning a new language; if anything, it helps both.