That's thinking a bit backward Steve? Of course you won't need an USB-2-USB device for your laptop since there you'll use your laptop keyboard. And since you'll then have a layout installed on that laptop, any USB keyboard you connect can use the same layout if you wish. So obviously, QUICKIE devices aren't for your personal laptop. ;-)

I use one for work, where I now have neither install nor run privileges on my office computer. And I carry one with me in case I have to use a keyboard on the fly and would like to type Colemak-CAW with Extend. I'm still trying to figure out what to use the third one I bought for – probably proselytizing. :-D

Indeed, QUICKIES are for on-the-fly connections and professional relations. At home, you have a better setup for more deeply satisfying experiences in a long-term relationship. ;-)

He'd just switch layout and leave QWERTY. Especially if work computers allowed setting your layout, but if they didn't he'd get a programmable USB keyboard. The hassle of getting the right layout at a computer is less than the benefit of typing with a good layout.

With my USB-2-USB device I switch in 1/2 a minute, and get Extend mappings as well! ;-)

That is certainly true. Why would I do a 2 minute change to send a 5 minute email. What if I forget to change it back.. LOL...
QWERTY is not ideal and certainly not the easiest to get used to. However it is interesting that I did get used to QWERTY faster than the time it took me to learn Colemak. Maybe there was some muscle memory there or something.

I can say that I am finally making some progress on typing with QWERTY. We changed the keyboard on my office system to a DELL KB216p. Pretty nice keyboard. I do feel that my typing is faster and more controlled that using the other DELL keyboard came with the system.
At home I use an Apple A1243.. Absolutely love the tactile feel of that one. There were some people on Quora who suggest that I switch to a mechanical keyboard to increase my accuracy and speed. But when I tried my brother's RAZOR Gaming keyboard I felt my speed and accuracy were like almost nil. It wasn't comfortable for me. I prefer my Apple to that. The new DELL keyboard feels about the same the Apple which means that I am getting better with QWERTY far more easily now.
Right now my WPM is about an average of 36. I know that is not impressive, but it is quite fast for me. :)

Those will be Cherry Red or Black switches, most likely. For a typing-gaming combo, some prefer Brown. Dedicated typists want some other color or otherwise.

Read more about it here: http://www.pcgamer.com/best-mechanical- … or-gaming/

It is so frustrating not being able to break the 40 WPM barrier on typeracer. Even after trying the same quote over and over again, the WPM seems to be going lower instead of higher. And accuracy along with it. Why does this have to be so difficult?
I can see that there are others who are using QWERTY that are doing far more better than me with insane WPM.

Well, I guess I may be slow neurologically speaking but that doesn't limit me to 40 WPM. Around 70 WPM, rather. My personal goal is 80 WPM consistently. On QWERTY I never made it much past 55 WPM but that's mostly about training I believe.

I play the piano. Some pieces get borked up for you. To learn them right, you have to unlearn all the bad habits that you got while learning. It's very hard to do.

To transcend your personal typing limitations, you have to make sure you haven't got hangups. Practise your weakest words, try to find out what your biggest weaknesses are. Then solve them methodically by overtraining. But the best training is varied, so don't focus on one thing for too long at a time.

I believe I can do faster, it is just much slower progress than I expected. Need to say that I started to learn touch-typing systematically in June last year with zero previous experience. That might be harder than re-wire from qwerty touch-typing to Colemak one.
I also keep changing layout, switched from vanilla Colemak to Angle(Z)Wide mod, and now trying to re-learn to use left thumb for Space to free the right thumb for AltGr. Planning to use AltGr as Shift modifier.

there are certainly words that you are better and poorer at. thats just a lazy response and shows that you have no real desire to get faster, which means people are wasting their time responding to you

you'd rather just complain about your woes instead of conquering them. if you care, then start paying attention where you stumble and practice those. practice the movements required of your fingers until it is comfortable (rolls are fastest). keep practicing until the word is ingrained into your memory.

i type 100-120wpm on qwerty but i'm experimenting with new fingerings such as left index on 'c', and right index on 'b' and right middle on 'u' for 'bu' and 'hu' combos. obviously my speed has now dropped, but its because my brain's memory is now disrupted. i now just need many many repetitions to ingrain the new fingering into my memory

i don't feel that strongly about this topic, but i do feel strongly about that type of defeatist attitude. most people are much more capable than they give themselves credit for

although i am a big AHK user, i don't really want to remap my whole layout. thats the reason why i haven't switched to colemak. i dont want to relearn everything. i dont see the benefit as outweighing the costs. my mind already 'knows' where all the keys are, so some tweaks to use different fingers will be easier to learn than relearning the _location_ of the letters.

and yes, i only use a laptop nowadays so i'm stuck with the keyboard i've got

Thanks for your comments MisterW. While it is unusual, it is fact that learning new skills and muscle memory takes twice as long for me as it would a normal person. I do not know why, but it has been that way throughout my life. Reading up on experiences and seeing how easily people advance makes me angry with myself.
I just feel that it extremely frustrating that I have been typing on QWERTY for more than 2 years now and the only bit of muscle memory that I have is pressing the BackSpace.

I'm not a defeated. I won't give up. Didn't when Colemak was hard. Stuck with that for 2 years. But when I was finally making progress with it, I made the switch to QWERTY for the very reasons mentioned when I started this thread.

At the moment, I find that when I keep in doing a certain paragraph on typeracer over and over again, my WPM and accuracy goes down. They say practice makes perfect, but I experience it having the opposite effect.
One thing that I do appreciate is the prior to my adventures with Dvorak and Colemak, I was using my own hunt and peck method with QWERTY. Now, even though every second keystroke is a backspace, I am able to type without looking at the keyboard. That shows at least while my fingers are not working properly, my brain at least has memorized the layout. 
It is now even more difficult since I shifted to a mechanical keyboard. My old Apple A1243 was a great keyboard. Although it stopped working, it certainly felt more better than this RAZOR BlackWidow with Blue Cherry MX.