As most of you know, QWERTY is the name for the keyboard layout that is the standard in the United States. QWERTY was created in the 1860's with the invention of the first typewriter. At first, logically, the letters were arranged in alphabetical order. This, however, began to present a problem as typists gained speed and proficiency. When typing at faster speeds, the bars of the letters that were located close together became stuck, slowing down the typist and marking up their paper. The solution to this problem was to space letters commonly used together at a distance from each other to avoid the bars sticking together. This was an excellent solution for the typewriter, but as computers replaced typewriters, the QWERTY standard transferred to modern keyboards even though the bar-sticking problem had been eliminated. The QWERTY keyboard was optimized to solve the letter sticking problem not for speed, accuracy, or comfort. This has resulted in unnecessary lost productivity, typing mistakes, and repetitive use injuries over the past 30 or so years.

The good news is that you don't have to be stuck with the QWERTY and its slow, inaccurate, uncomfortable layout. In the 1930's with the invention of the electric typewriter a new layout known as the Dvorak layout was devised. This time, the key layout was created with considerations for speed, accuracy and comfort. It was devised specifically on the following principles:

1. It's easier to type letters alternating between hands
2. Common letters and commonly typed letter combinations are grouped close to each other and are placed on the home row where the fingers rest.
3. The least common letters are placed on the bottom row because it is the hardest to reach
4. Letters are arranged so the right hand does more of the typing because most people are right handed.
5. it is more difficult to type digraphs with adjacent fingers than non-adjacent fingers.
6. stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle (notice which direction you move your fingers when tapping them on a table)

-source Wikipedia

With these considerations for speed and ease of use, many who use the Dvorak method report faster typing speed, increased accuracy, and less joint pain and repetitive use injury.

a Blogger over at http://www.rubyonrailsblog.com recently switched to the Dvorak and gave a nice account of how long it took him to move from QWERTY to Dvorak:

Here are his stats:

Sep 06 5wpm
Sep 08 12wpm
Sep 13 24wpm
Sep 15 27wpm
Sep 16 33wpm for 2 minutes
Sep 26 43wpm
Sep 27 52wpm
Sep 29 51wpm
Oct 09 55wpm
Oct 16 62wpm
Oct 17 65wpm

Certainly switching a keyboard layout is a big undertaking, but consider how much typing you are going to do over the course of your life. If you are in a career with a light amount of typing say on average 1000 words per week. That is a total of 1,040,000 words typed over the next 20 years. at 60words per minute that is 12 days of continuous typing over 20 years. by increasing your speed by about 15% to 70wpm and you have taken away two full days of typing.

Switching to Dvorak is even more of an advantage for people in writing oriented careers that type upwards of 20,000 words per week. Consider people in these fields will type 20,800,000 words over the next 20 years. At 60words per minute using the QWERTY keyboard this is more than 240 days of continuous typing. by using Dvorak and and increasing your speed conservatively by about 15% to 70wpm, that is 206 days of continuous typing, saving you 34 days of continuous typing over the next 20 years. As you can imagine, improving your speed by more than 15% your time savings would be considerably more.

Sold on the Dvorak? well if you are, here are some places to help you get started with the switch:

http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/convert.html
http://dvzine.org/type/reconfig.html

....and because some people always have to take things to that next level, here is probably the worlds most ergonomic keyboard: