Have you ever considered of mousing ambidextrously?

It doesn't, nor did I say so. That's why there are 4 sentences by me in the above quote, and the third starts with an "And".

It would eliminate the need to do that exercise more than once in your lifetime, and thus the need for a dedicated program to do it.

--
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.

:)

I understand. But I learned a long time ago how to select chairs of the right altitude, place my hands correctly, and it's no effort at all to suspend them and use them in this fashion.

Perhaps you recall (if you were trained to write with a pencil and pen as a young kid) the instruction to avoid pinching your pencil real hard, so hard that you wind up reversing your knuckle somewhat. Instead, you are instructed to not pressure, but just gently suspend and hold, your "writing instrument." Some folks never got this instruction and will eventually find an accommodation that works for them, but not nearly as well as if they had learned the right practice early on.

It's kind of like that, I imagine. Right now, on my keyboard, I have my hands suspended in the air right near my lap (in other words, my arms hang directly down) and they are resting on nothing at all as I type. No resting board, etc.

I'm sure it wasn't accidental. So I agree with you on that point.

I don't happen to like it, as it increases my difficulties. I've been trained how to position myself and use my hands in piano playing and I've been using keyboard for more years than you have been alive, some

40 years now. My opinion may be a matter for debate, but I don't think there is any argument that what I've been trained to do is a valid and reasoned approach that does work well, for those so trained. It conflicts with the arrangements of some of these keyboard designs. Luckily, there are designs that work well, as I've been trained to use them.

So, I'd say just use what works for you. But I just didn't want anyone to improperly take your comments as suggesting a gospel line that such is the "correct way." I know you didn't say so, but the impression could have been taken from it. I figured I'd chip in and point out that there is at least one other valid approach.

Hehe. You mean the IBM Thinkpad thingies? Yes, I'm used to those and like them better than the touchpads, too. Oh, well. Sorry to have to agree with you there! ;)

...

What galls me about computers today is that we have 100's of millions of transistors (nay, it's well into the billions) in a laptop. The CPUs are burning up prodigious wattage when running at full speed. There is L1 cache, L2 cache, overlapped transactions on the front side bus, inbound and outbound queuing, read-around-writes, 100's of megabytes of RAM, 100's of gigs of disk space, etc. And all for what? So that I can sit here with a 3 GHz CPU that's eating 100 watts while I edit ascii text, use a command line compiler, edit this simple ASCII text, etc? Or so that some game writer doesn't have to be bothered with optimizing their matrix equations or learning how to make better use of the hardware and can plan on 200 Meg of textures in RAM and just "brute force it" all?

I'd like a simple laptop using an 80386 CPU running at a few hundred kHz built upon 180nm feature size technology for super low power. DOS or linux or 386BSD based tools. Modern IC technology, small static external cache and large dynamic RAM designed for minimizing power through not cycling the DRAM as often (not speed), simpler CPU. That's it. AA batteries for ease of finding and replacement anywhere in the world. Darned thing could probably run for a year without changing out the AA's. The HP 300 unit I have, running Win 3.1 with a 1" hard drive, was pretty close (used AA batteries) except that it uses old technology for the CPU and could only last a couple of weeks. Today, that could be made to last very much longer.

I don't do much at all requiring graphics; I'm an embedded programmer working on scientific and commercial instrumentation and not end user consumer items where sizzle plays large. I edit ascii files. I do some word processing (but Word 5.5 was just perfect and DOS-based.) I use command line compilation. I get mail, send mail, and read a few newsgroups. I don't need font colors and docking windows. I can live without print preview, too. I don't want IDEs, choices of vertical and horizontal layouts, etc. When I use a laptop, I want something that I can use on a road trip without worry about having to have a power cord following me around, either for the car's cigarette lighter plug or the AC wall. Batteries should go in and last for months at a stretch. Should be AA -- no fancy $100+ Li-ion stuff in funky shapes and colors. Real simple, real easy, buy-anywhere for cheap batteries.

Jon

I'm sure you are up to it, Lewin. ;)

Jon

Shucks. I forgot. I didn't entirely agree with the way you set up your shelving. That bow in the middle was really annoying! I knew there had to be at least two things! ;)

Jon

You can replace almost every mouse function with a keyboard shortcut, ( for most programs anyway except CAD )

You would be in awe of someone who has complete mastery of 100 or so keyboard shortcuts, I know of one such person, he can open/close programs /cut/paste/ jump to/access menus so blindingly fast as to make me feel like a complete idiot when he watches me do the same with a mouse. The mouse is a crutch for the most part, easy to use initially but really slows you down in the long run as it continuously forces you to move your hand off the keyboard. Learning all the keyboard shortcuts is not easy though, probably as difficult as learning how to type moderately fast.

... snip ...

And like me, no doubt, when anyone comes by and sees a text screen and command lines you get accused of being a neanderthalic throwback. My machines come up with a full text/command line window.

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Somewhere, an OSHA representative is reading this and having a heart attack.

I'm not sure. I know I probably gripped my pens much too hard, because I haven't done a whole lot of handwriting since high school (16 years ago) and I STILL have a writers' callus on my right middle finger.

Ah, now here's something else we can argue about and really get our teeth into. What exactly is the relationship between piano playing and typing? Piano playing has four major differences from typing:

1. Velocity is important in piano playing.
2. Maximum force is much higher in piano playing than in [modern] typing.
3. Piano keys are in "one and a half" dimensions vs. the distinctly two-dimensional keyboard. The size of the piano keyboard is also much larger, and this is not insignificant. A good touch typist barely moves the hand at all; the fingers stretch to cover the keys. This is why supported, fixed wrist positions work for typing. A pianist, however, _MUST_ move the wrists laterally along the keyboard to reach low and high notes.
4. Few people operate a piano continuously for more than eight hours a day.

So, what is the reason to believe that the best position for one is the best position for the other? These appear to be radically different activities.

Mutter, mutter, curmudgeonly stuff, mutter mutter :)

Yes. Having to use a touchpad moves my hands off the keys. NONE of the inbuilt laptop pointing devices (even trackballs) are accurate enough for intensive mouse work anyway - I'd rather have the eraser tip than the trackpad, given that all I need it for is to access options that can't be reached from the keyboard due to defective programmers.

Sounds like you want a Newton MessagePad 2100 running Linux instead of Newton OS :)

I had a 200LX but sold it eventually; rarely used the thing.

Can't argue with most of your requirements there. Those devices are called cellphones now. I have a Sidekick, which lets me telnet in to my home computers and run my compilers there (from my seat in a bar). One of my fairly recent articles - I forget which - was written entirely on the Sidekick while sitting in a bar, over a couple of sessions. Built the code on my Mac mini (running Linux) using telnet over GPRS.

My father-in-law chose to use two rails instead of three! It irritates me too, because I wanted to put my containers of screws there. As it is, I have to confine myself to lighter objects.

Same here on all points above. I have suspected that there are generational issues and perhaps also neuro-muscular ones as well for those folks who grew-up using game controllers and who display fast reaction times using the thumb which is entirely antithetical to previous kinesthetic knowledge. When one learned to type on a keyboard which required uniform impulse to create uniform impressions on paper, one couldn't rest the wrists on a surface. Funny, I don't recall any spate of carpel-tunnel amongst the vast throngs of typing-pool typists either; this seemed to arise with the advent of CRTs and a generation of operators not trained on typewriters.

The Selectric keyboard was a dream compared to other electrics and certainly all manual typewriters; it provided good tactile feedback and provided a roll-over facility in case of cadence errors. To this day I am extremely picky about key travel and tactile feedback and get funny reactions from folks who are used to crappy-mooshy key travel and cheap keyboards when I express a preference. (This should be no big whoop compared with the need of an old friend to carefully weigh loads of molten lead to properly weigh his chess pieces).

I too would like an ultra-low-power 386 laptop; I still use an HP150 (with some ROM mods) and also a similar Tandy for the long battery life -- these use low-power cmos versions of the 8086.

Michael Grigoni Cybertheque Museum

It is good that you can count, but you still did not explain what you meant by "better to not use the mouse all that much" and then talk about the alternative, keyboard use. If you are not saying you can use the keyboard instead of the mouse, what exactly ARE you saying??? How should he reduce his use of the mouse???

Notice that he is not complaning of pain in both hands, just the one he uses with the mouse. I had the same problem and I already touch type with my arms in the right position. Of the several changes I made, switching the mouse to the left hand was the most effective to releaving my pains.

Again, you restate the claim, but you don't clarify it. If he has two mice, how does that preclude the need for switching the buttons? A mouse is still a mouse. Are there special mice that have the buttons reversed??? Are you saying you can set one mouse for left handed use while keeping another right handed??? How would you do that?

My machines start in runlevel 3 also. It's excellent protection against sticky fingers. Nobody knows where to begin.

The Microsoft one is also optical - but the ball is supported on three tiny ball bearings. It's these that need cleaning... and in my case appear to be worn. I guess there is no maintenance-free rodent. Pah.

Steve

Heh - I only recently switched from PC-Write, a DOS editor, which I'd been using since circa '84. I kept using it well into the GUI age for just those reasons - my fingers knew all the shortcuts (my brain had long since forgotten them - if I had to explain a shortcut, I'd have to watch my fingers and relay what they were doing).

And I echo the requirement for a low-power laptop suited to text editing...

Steve

Hmm, odd. My wife's is supported on what look like (but certainly aren't) jewel bearings. Each suspension point has a little translucent red sphere in it. It isn't a ball bearing per se, because the spheres don't roll - they are simply hard plastic balls that touch the big rolling ball at a small point and provide a low-friction contact.

It may be the same deal with mine - I've never fully worked out whether the ball bearings roll. I suspect they don't. I certainly can't feel them moving, and as I said earlier, one is showing signs of a flat spot.

Whatever the reason, I find the ball frequently gets juddery... and I'm fairly fastidious about having clean hands. Seems to be the one design failing of the Microsoft offering, but I'm not sure if there's a solution. I'm going to try a Logitech next...

Steve

Same here! Switched over to SlickEdit a few years ago. The one thing I miss that PC-Write has that no other editor seems to have is the ability to cut and past a block of text without changing the spacing of text to the right of the block. That was real hand at times.

I also use a mouse with both hands (mostly left) to reduce RSI . I've never felt the need to switch buttons or flip the cursor. The first week of using it felt very strange, then it starts to work, and after 3 months I frequently don't even know whether I have it on the left or right.

Mat Nieuwenhoven

I think they'd see the sense of it, once they could look for themselves and see what the evidence shows them, regardless of any prior reactions.

Yes.

We could debate that.

Well, there are differences. I didn't mean to suggest that a piano keyboard was the same thing just because it uses the word 'keyboard' in it. I was just noting that it's possible that Michael and I are agreeing for reasons of similar experiences and interests. Not sure of any of that, though.

It was a big break-through for me when I first was able to play ragtime more than about 20 minutes without pain in my fingers. I remember the very day when I was practicing and had gone on for almost an hour and half without stop. When I realized what I'd done, I stopped for a moment, held out my hands and just 'listened' to the tingle going on. No pain, nothing. Just pure energy and still ready to go for more. I realized then and there that practice is also about endurance and is another facet of what lets you get it right. And it wasn't just "work up to 20 minutes" then "work up to 25 minutes" then "work up to 30 minutes." It was a sudden switch for me, from piss poor endurance to a sudden realization that I could go and go and go! What a feeling that moment was.

Eight hours? No, I've not had the freedom to even try that one. But I think I might be up for the idea!

I can't say, really. I'm just noting the correlation without a theory to go on. So it's a very weak statement. But there it is, anyway.

One of these days, I'll rise up out of my wheelchair and whack the next whippersnapper with my cane that tells me about the "golden age" of computing in the 1980's. (To borrow a phrase from Asimov!)

Well, I agree. :)

I want something of the size of the HP 300, nothing fancy in the display (no color would be fine but certainly nothing more than DOS style text font support), and able to run a month on a pair of AAs. I figure that with current computers in the roughly 1 billion transistor equivalent mark and the 80386 computer I used to use in the perhaps 1 million transistor region including all the extras in the chipsets and FPU and not just the CPU, so we're talking about maybe 100mW total -- and that is pushing it because I'm still keeping GHz speeds in that scaling and which I simply don't need. So if you scaled that back too by a factor of at least 100, we'd be near the couple-mW area with current technology fully applied to the task of low power offerings. If I use it four hours a day, my speculation is that we're talking about 15-40 Joules a day. An AA has about 10k of them. Two has 20k Joules. You can see that I should get some decent life out of a pair

-- perhaps a year if they don't get lazy on me and start squandering those Joules. But at least a month.

I _used_ the 300.

No phones. I want the basic computer, full keyboard, etc. Those darned phones with tiny keys are useless -- even assuming I'd want them wasting power with subchannel chat with towers and communicating my whereabouts all day long.

Jon

P.S. Oh... and did I mention that I want a full front panel on my non-laptop computer, complete with access to all the MSRs, MTRRs, selector caches, front side bus pending transactions, re-order buffers, registration station status, etc. all accessible and changeable from it?!! (A trace of all that to scroll through wouldn't be bad, either.)

yup. Same as with me. One of the reasons I haven't gone even more over to the dark side with NT based systems (although, I admit being impressed with some of the core design of NT, I'm not happy with being forced to layer win32 on top of the poor thing [I had to learn about detailed calls into NT from DEC Alpha docs since at the time Microsoft wouldn't do it good justice on their own.]) I boot to DOS and _may_ type WIN when I feel like it.

Jon