Sad to see you go, but best of luck to you.

I have Colemak on a USB stick in my pocket and in a folder in my Dropbox at all times, so I'm never far away from it. But I understand your troubles.

To be honest, I kinda grew fond of Colemk. Its easy shortcuts, comfort is for the moment unmatched. I was beginning to touch-type so well & it felt good.
But the sad truth is that Colemak is not practical for me the more I thought about it. I want to be able to touch-type on any computer that I come across; right from the moment my finger hits the 1st key.
Even Dvorak would not work for work. Its available on all systems, that's true. Although considering all, it would be crazy to spend 2 - 5 mins changing the layout on a system that I may only be using for a max of 30; even more so if it is public terminal.

All that said, if any one is having issues with QWERTY in terms of pain, RSI, etc., I would definitely recommend Colemak. Its Dvorak made better. :P.

So in short, you like the layout, but you don't find it practical.

I picked up Dvorak with some trepidation over portability, but it looked more portable than Colemak.  It's just a damn shame that layout switching isn't that much easier.  It adds friction.

I'll be interested to know if your Qwerty touch typing shows improvement.

Disc brakes were marketable. Keyboard manufacturers don't think they'll make more money from promoting Colemak so they don't. Mental inertia being what it is, I fear they're spot on there.

Another problem is the plethora of alternatives available. Dvorak products do exist, but how should a vendor know whether to support Colemak or Workman or something else? Sure, I believe that Colemak is a stayer and it's quite big but I can imagine that the vendors aren't quite as convinced.

I do notice that I'm not using the usual touch-typing techniques for the moment. I switched over to QWERTY cold-turkey over night. But I will be using typingweb.com to help me gain the right techniques and in time speed. Maybe I'll learn to develop some techniques of my own to alleviate the strain.

From what I gather, Sean has more or less matched Barbara with respect to long-term speeds. Like her, he can keep a blazing speed for an hour if he wants to, not just some short-distance run trick.

What this proves is that QWERTY *can* be used for really really fast typing, and that the superiority of other layouts based purely on speed is hard to prove, if existent (which I still believe it is, logically speaking). It also proves that to be that fast on QWERTY you have to develop your entirely own style, but that's really true for any layout I think. For the highest speeds you need to transcend the layout and make it part of you, not just on a letter-by-letter basis but for all the common words or at least word components.

Sean would probably struggle quite a bit with Colemak because of this, so he hasn't been willing to give it a try. He'd have to relearn not just the layout but all the special tricks that make him so fast. I do believe he'd make, say, 120+ WPM with Colemak in no time (likely 140+ WPM too!), but for it to settle enough to make him a competitor for the world records again would likely take a while. But oh, how I'd like that to happen! ;)

The speed question is hard to judge given that almost all typists in the world use Qwerty. Dvorak and Colemak users are unfortunately statistically insignificant!

Someone should do a research project. Take a couple of hundred people with no typing experience (might be hard to find; best bet would probably be children and/or from developing countries). Divide them into 3 groups and give them a different layout each, Qwerty, Dvorak, and Colemak. It would be interesting know, given an initial level playing field, (i) how quickly their typing ability would develop and (ii) how fast they would eventually become.

If the world population used the three layouts in roughly equal quantities, I feel certain that even the best of the Qwerty group would not be anywhere near the record-holders.

Ah... Imagine!  ;)

Props to you.  I have never been able to maintain multiple layouts at any respectable speed, despite having tried many times.  If course I was trying to maintain Dvorak and Colemak, which is probably more difficult than Qwerty and Colemak.

If I had been in your shoes, I would have purchased a hardware programmable keyboard so my boss wouldn't know I was using Colemak.

In the early typing contests I hear the dvorak typists got banned outright for a few years, until they petitioned to get their ability to compete back.

I think the difference between top typists using qwerty, dvorak, colemak, is simply a numbers game on user share. 99% of the world users something qwerty based
1% of those become competing typists, 1% world uses dvorak or colemak and maybe 1% of those become competing typists etc.
Not a very high ratio to produce a truly amazing world record breaking typist.

Its been over a decade since I touch typed qwerty, honestly no amount of it taking a minute to switch keyboard layouts to use a PC I'm working on at my work could ever make me switch back to qwerty, I'd just do
it, especially if I knew that all the computers at my work would be running something that has layout support, if I was working on something that wouldn't have layout support I'd throw down
and get a hardware usb keyboard (not a option at your work since they probable want to keep the terminals secure).

Just an update. My journey back to QWERTY has not been as great as I hoped. I knew that getting back is going to be painful. Fortunately I can hunt and peck for the time being.
As predicted, it does not seem natural. I don't think any ergonomics was ever considered in developing the layout. It is not extremely painful but it is extremely slow. Almost as slow as my progress with Colemak.

Perhaps it is because I haven't been doing the typing practises as much as I should.

It's very tempting DreymaR. I would certainly consider it.

But I haven't given up on QWERTY on yet. :)

I guess I need to take more time to train myself on it.