You can't get them anymore. The website is still up but they seldom react to e-mails and don't sell anymore.

It seems to me that Icarium must have meant “off center,” so that the keys are caused to bind in their shaft when they are not hit in the center. The problem might be eased by carefully applying a bit of graphite to the post, but I have never tried to do this. The keys can be removed by pulling them straight up with needle-nosed pliers (reinstall them in the same orientation without turning them 90 degrees; they can be turned 180 degrees!)

Most people probably simply learn to hit the keys more accurately in the center of the key-well, but I think the keys were designed erroneously with too large a “dish” in the center and with the outer ridge too close to the side keys. I would have made the “dish” about one-quarter or at most 5/16th of an inch in diameter. At the time, I thought it was not a huge error and it could be easily fixed, but it never has been---because no one in the company understands why the issue is as important as I feel it is. Men with large fingers do not easily understand the problem, and they are also not production typists, so they do not understand the issues of people who type continuously for long hours---even though they should---because the product they work with is the best ergonomic keyboard ever made with no other even coming close.

They have tuned me out on the point, I think, partly because they have felt they have more important matters to deal with, but I think they do not understand the importance of this issue to the efficient and effective use of the DH keyboard, and other users do not point it out to them because most people do not know what “better” is until they see or feel it more than briefly. They need to work with the change for long enough to understand why it is better. (The depronation issue with the DH is a similar issue. This is also an important issue for people who type for long hours, but people who are coming from the flat keyboards as their frame of reference do not understand why that is.)

Because of the small movements the fingers make among the five keys, it is very important to home accurately to the center of the key-well. This is how the fingers know where they are in relation to all five of the keys, but when the down key is a big dish, as it is, the fingers do not get any help understand where the center (home position) is. The feel of the center is amorphous and ambiguous with the current center key design. To fix this problem, I have cut the sides off of all my down keys, turning the key into a square post at the center of the key-well. That is enough to allow the fingers to accurately orient themselves in the key-well, but it is more important when using Dvorak than when using QWERTY because Dvorak emphasizes the center keys while QWERTY emphasizes the North keys which is the most awkward and inefficient movement on the DataHand keyboard. Dvorak users tend to understand more about efficiency in general, or they would not have converted to Dvorak layout in the first place. From the point of view of keyboard efficiency, QWERTY people are in the Stone Age, so they need to make the first steps in their thinking before they can go on to make the more complex further analytical steps. Anyone capable of making the necessary analysis would not be using QWERTY to start with. They would have moved to Colemak or Dvorak or something else, and they would be visionary enough to understand the benefits to be gained from the change (even though they are greater on the flat keyboard than they are on the DH just because the DH design fixes so much. The improved efficiency of the thumbs is a giant step for example.

As for the palm pad issue, I would take them off, put them to a sink and give them a good scrubbing with a soapy brush. Then, I would finish the cleaning by putting them through the dishwasher (though I do not remember ever needing to do this with my own palm pads. I have not cleaned mine in a decade, but I do wash my hands and I do work in a clean environment. The only cleaning my keyboard gets is the chance to be blown out with compressed air three or four times a year. That gets rid of accumulated dander in the key-wells, and I know when to do it after the dander build-up has started to block the light beam on the key-switches.

If I had an issue with the palm pads, I would want to cover them with some kind of washable cloth, not with plastic wrap, because I would not like the feel of that, but I suppose it has the advantage of stretching to fit. I do not have a problem with the feel of the pads, but I agree that a different feel could be preferable, but I also like a pad that is maintenance free, and mine have been easily maintained without needing attention.

Finally, on the company question, I think they should charge more than they do for the keyboard, so they will have more money to permanently fix the supplier issues and also because the keyboard is worth much more than any other keyboard---but to do this without killing the market, they would need to actively and effectively sell the full value of the product and not be intimidated by those who say, “No keyboard should cost that much.” This is something they have never historically been equipped to do, and they have not understood their own product well enough to do it. Before it can happen people must be able to fully understand the value and have the personnel with the skill to reach out and credibly sell it enthusiastically and positively, but most of the people involved in sales at the company in the past have been typical sales and business types without the ability to establish good empathy with users and potential users or to look or sound like anything more than what they have been: people trying to make a buck. Some have radiated the sense of a “hustle” as if they were shouting it into a megaphone, and that is the worst possible kind of a sales team to have when selling a radically different product that is already intimidating and even confusing---when most people expect keyboards to look like keyboards always have looked.

Most customers have have had to sell themselves on the product in the face of sales people who were historically more often a turn off and a bummer than a help. Needed are sales people who are thoroughly knowledgeable and committed users of the keyboard and fully understand from their own personal experience all the issues users need to confront. It takes a lot of support and commitment to good customer relations. They have had that lately and finally, but now they need to be able work out the troubles and focus on serving the market that does clearly exist.

@Icarium: Weird, I never had any off-center problems. Maybe because it's hard to hit off-center. Your fingers rest on the down keys, and return there when flipping keys in a nesw direction.
You could try ground coffee to remove odor (google for it).
Burro, I think you have to come to terms with the fact DataHand died a long time ago, and has been merely operating on left overs manned by two or three stubborn semi-ex-employees with other full-time jobs to pay the bills. All kinds of ideas to market the DataHand, they already tried for a decade from the first versions in the nineties. All this time they tried many different ways to sell and market it. They lost and the people left. Ergonomic keyboards, all of them, just don't work as an economic viable product.

The market for ergonomic keyboards does not work in part because the federal court and jury made an erroneous and extremely costly decision to push the responsibility for stress injury off onto the workers while saving the corporations from liability. That made at least a thousand liability cases in federal and state courts go disappear or get settled. The result has been much more costly productivity loss for everyone than it ever would have cost to reach a different resolution, but this is a longer topic. In the meantime, there is a niche market for the DataHand product regardless of what would happen to the company. The problem has been that company was never managed to build a market for the product or understand the way to do it in the wake of the court decision; it was managed to produce an IPO before a market was as well established as it needed to be. Management never understood the kind of business plan required to foster the market following the adversity of the court decision in the stress injury cases. That decision caused the potential and still existing underlying market to evaporate or go underground, and it made necessary a greatly scaled back plan with a longer timetable. Against that, impatience for a payout was the product's enemy, and it also put the company in a deep hole regardless of the continuing value of the product. But a resurrection of one kind or another is still possible, because a sufficient market does exist, and it is growing. A market does not exist for all the valueless so-called ergonomic crap in the market that one California doctor has referred to as no better than a ten percent solution (if that), but it does exist for a product that can deliver real benefit. The right sales effort can overcome the difficulty selling a revolutionary and easily misunderstood product by building slowly and patiently, and that in fact was happening before the problems arose with the manufacturing company. I do not know the nature of those troubles, but they may have been recession related---and associated with the other business that company had.

I don't agree about the market bit. Liability is pretty strong in Europe btw. They tried many different tactics. But even if you think they were lame, what about all other ergonomic keyboards? With the exception of one or two like Kinesis, they all perished, and the few survivors are minor players.

That market does not work simply because they are not standard qwerty keyboards. No one's first keyboard is an ergonomic keyboard. You introduce a learning curve. Hence the fate is the same as dvorak's, no matter what you try. If you buy an ergonomic keyboard, you won't have the same keyboard at the work place or on your laptop. At one point you replace the computer and/or keyboard, and for it to work you need to buy the same ergonomic keyboard from the same brand. It doesn't work that way. You end up with a few dedicated users, as yourself, but no real business.

All I am saying is there is sufficient market for a small company to make a living from selling the product, but to make it work there have been several matters to overcome, and one of them was "strange device resistance." Another was price resistance which made it necessary to aggressively sell the real value in a way able to make it impressive and credible to people. That was never done, because the sellers for years were not keyboard workers with the ability to make it convincing. Hucksters cannot do the job. Third, companies have protected themselves against liability by putting down all ergonomic claims, and that still goes on even though the court case was the major victory on this point. All these can be overcome sufficiently to make a living with the right program.

If you are saying that DataHand Systems tried many tactics in Europe, that is not true. There was never any significant focus on Europe. The situation for the minor recent players you mention is as it was for the Blickensderfer, Dvorak, and others. They could not overcome the QWERTY habit once it was significantly established, and businesses, schools, and individuals preferred standardization over efficiency. This was true as long as the hardware was basically the same as it has been when the DH is excluded; the improvement is not enough to cause people to overcome the relearning barrier or the inconveniences you cite (but propaganda has always muddied the water and accurate information has been prevented from being made available and understood; this has been particularly a problem for Dvorak over the years). Someone with major influence has been needed to make a commitment to something that can make a real improvement, but that becomes a political matter, and interests have opposed it as they did with Dvorak despite the benefits it demonstrated. Meanwhile, the DH is a significantly better hardware improvement compared to all the others, especially when it is used with a better layout. This is not proved on a short speed test, because those are meaningless and they depend on dexterity and exertion of the operators. What matters is full day comfort and productivity, and on that the DH has a huge advantage that has never yet been marketed because of the focus on the stress injured market and because of the corporate liability barrier. In sum, all the past experience should not apply to the DataHand future if people are able to put together the right program.

Burro Volando wrote:It seems to me that Icarium must have meant “off center,” so that the keys are caused to bind in their shaft when they are not hit in the center. The problem might be eased by carefully applying a bit of graphite to the post, but I have never tried to do this. The keys can be removed by pulling them straight up with needle-nosed pliers (reinstall them in the same orientation without turning them 90 degrees; they can be turned 180 degrees!)

Yes, I did mean off-center, sorry. I may actually have some of my pads inserted wrong because it didn't seem to matter to me, can you take a picture or describe the right way? Should the slot in the bottom be vertical or horizontal?
I may try greasing with graphite but I'm generally not fond of that. Tried to do it with the lock of my trunk once and I had to wash it out with a lot of WD40 before it worked at all again.

webwit wrote:@Icarium: Weird, I never had any off-center problems. Maybe because it's hard to hit off-center. Your fingers rest on the down keys, and return there when flipping keys in a nesw direction.

It is only a problem with my pinkies. I think my hand positioning may be incorrect. My hands are tilted too much so the pinkies always press down and in.

Burro Volando wrote:To fix this problem, I have cut the sides off of all my down keys, turning the key into a square post at the center of the key-well.

I would love to try that but I will not cut up my caps.
Maybe I can find some sort of glue to make little nubs in the middle of the dishes. It's definitely an interesting thought.

Burro Volando wrote:The improved efficiency of the thumbs is a giant step for example.

So far I am actually not particularly fond of the thumb clusters. I'm having trouble putting my hand down in a way that all the keys in the thumb cluster are well reachable (I have small hands) and some of the motions to press buttons still feel very weird.

webwit wrote:You could try ground coffee to remove odor (google for it).

Since they have been in the dishwasher several times, I will gladly try.

Replying to Icarium:
1. Without pulling a key to check on something I have not needed to do for years, I feel sure the slot should be horizontal. You cannot do damage if you insert it wrong, but when you have it right the key will click into place.
2. It helps me with this to raise the outer side of the finger board and lower the inner side using the slot adjustment on the sides of the units. Also, to help my pinkies access the outer keys on their key-well, I have installed tall keys on those two positions (and incidentally on the inner positions of the index finger key-wells, too). Contact Lynn or Sales@datahand.com to get the tall keys. She is answering e-mail, because she answered me today, but she may not always answer immediately. Finally, adjust the yaw wheels to bring the pinkie key-wells close to the palm pad.
3. It might work to drill a tiny hole and insert a clipped off pin head (test on some other material first to find the right bit size for a friction fit and do not drill very deep), but you can also contact Lynn to get some additional center keys (same as above on the tall keys). Get more than eight, so you have spares if you mess one up.
4. Do you have the small palm pad or the large? If you do not have the small one, ask Lynn about getting one.
5. People with very small (especially narrow) or very large hands may not be able to fit the DH despite the adjustments.
6. I cannot imagine what would cause the palm pads to absorb odors, but a coffee odor could be better than some others if it would not encourage you to drink too much coffee! (I have not googled on the issue)