TouchStream LP QWERTY

Rating:
Summary: Expensive, and worth twice as much.
Review: I spend roughly sixty hours a week typing. When my hands and wrists began to hurt I knew I had to do something. After much searching I bought this device to replace both my keyboard and my mouse.

It was perfect. I never leave home without it. The best part came after a few weeks, when I noticed that most of my task-habits had changed. Everything seemed faster and easier. I used the gesture recognition to do things I never bothered with before. For example, I'd lay out spreadsheets or maps that took advantage of zooming. Before this product, zooming took multiple keystrokes or keystroke-homing-pointing-keystroke combinations. Very cumbersome. Switching to this device, with its gesture recognition, made zooming as simple as spreading or contracting my fingers.

Recently, Raskin's "The Humane Interface" introduced the GOMS (goals, objects, methods, and selection rules) model of user interfaces to me. I learned why computer operation sped up: it had. This product reduces the time needed to switch hands from mouse to keyboard and back from about 0.4 seconds (Raskin 2000) to less than the time time needed to hit a single keystroke: 0.2 seconds.

That might seem a trivial savings, so let me repeat the first reason I bought this device. My wrists and hands no longer hurt.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent product. Eliminated my wrist pain.
Review: I was having severe wrist pain and looked at a number of options before deciding on this keyboard. Within 2 weeks of having this product my wrist pain disappeared. It took me a couple weeks to get used to typing on the keyboard and I'm still not as fast as I am on a traditional keyboard, but I save a lot of time using the gestures, so overall I am about as efficient on this keyboard as on a traditional keyboard/mouse.

I just spent a few days on the road using a laptop keyboard and my wrist pain is back. I am going to start bringing my keyboard on the road too.

I highly recommend this product to anyone who is experiencing any wrist pain. Anyone looking for a cool keyboard/mouse combination should consider this, but this might be a bit expensive just for the "cool" factor.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding -- truly effective innovation
Review: I've been using this keyboard 8 hours a day for 3 weeks (I'm a software engineer), and couldn't manage without it now.

I had been experiencing a sudden increase in RSI symptoms, particularly in my right elbow, shoulder, and wrist. It became clear that the problem was due to constantly reaching for the mouse, cursor keys and page-up/down.

After some research I came across the TouchStream (it's not particularly well marketed unfortunately, even though it is a mature product). It's an amazing device, combining mouse functionality, text-cursor 'pointing' (i.e. like a mouse; forget cursor keys!), a zero-force keyboard, and an extremely cool gesture system for many common actions (cut/paste etc.). The user's hands need never move away from the keyboard. It also has great support for specialist users, such as software engineers (a code punctuation pad and gesture sets for vi and emacs), and 3D graphic artists (gestures for object manipulation in Maya).

The unit is staggeringly customizable via a nice GUI. And it even has an SDK that allows users to write useful features; e.g. see the excellent (and free) XWinder application on the FingerWorks website. The customer forums (on the same website) are great -- full of helpful hints from enthusiastic users, and showing a very strong customer-support ethic from FingerWorks staff.

Googling for 'TouchStream' finds several reviews and blog entries. Most users loved it, a few have problems (usually dramatically slower typing speeds at first, due to inaccuracies), but often say they plan to stick with it anyway, due to the reduction/removal of RSI pain.

I found similar problems with typing at first. But a few minutes practice a day with a typing tutor program (I use TypeSmart) really helps. It's definitely worth persevering because effortless 'zero-force' typing becomes great fun once your error-rate drops to something bearable. Plus the gestures and other innovations immediately compensate to some degree for slower typing at the outset.

I suppose it might not work for everyone, but the pain in my right arm completely disappeared on the first day of use, and hasn't returned. That's so absurdly dramatic that I wonder why FingerWorks don't make stronger claims about reducing RSI than they do.

Now whenever I'm forced to use a normal keyboard or mouse, they feel unbearably clunky and awkward. Also, my RSI pain returns almost immediately -- and vanishes again when I return to the TouchStream. I wish I'd discovered it years ago.

I also considered keyboards from Kinesis, Maltron, Goldtouch, SafeType, and Adesso. They all seem to be good, possibly great designs, offering various combinations of basic ergonomic features along with their own particular innovations. But for me the TouchStream is the only device that offers a complete solution -- a well-integrated package of effective ideas. And I think that makes it a qualitative leap forward in humane input devices.

I hope this review helps someone.