I touch typed for many years with Qwerty. When I switched to Colemak I noticed that my right pinky started to ache, which it had never done before. I put this down to pressing down on the O key so much compared with the virtually unused semi-colon that it is on Qwerty. I think this lasted maybe for about two weeks. After that the finger was strengthened and I felt no more discomfort. Hopefully this will be the same for you.

I've never been a fan of 'ergonomic' keyboards. I don't like how they shrink some keys and make some others larger. Plus if you have to use a standard keyboard, you would probably be all fingers and thumbs. For me the great thing about Colemak is I can use it on any keyboard, and I don't feel discomfort. I'd say bin that 'ergo' board and get a good mechanical one instead.

Edit: Most of these ergonomic 'boards are designed to lessen the effects of your fingers jumping all over the place using Qwerty. Don't use Qwerty and ergo, you won't need an ergonomic keyboard.

Yeah, I get that a lot!

I know a lot of people use, and love, ergonomic 'boards. I looked into getting one myself (due to discomfort with Qwerty). Ultimately what put me off was the premium price for a cheap, spongy, membrane keyboard due to it being 'ergonomic', and the mangling of the keys that bombadil has written about.

The point I'm trying to get across is that I find Colemak is well suited for a regular staggered keyboard that most of the world has used since the typewriter first appeared.

Jammycakes has had problems using Colemak on a laptop. I haven't. Many other's haven't.

Any keyboard layout that relies on, or encourages, a special keyboard to make it more comfortable goes against what Colemak was designed for:

"...efficient and ergonomic touch typing in English."

That's why I say - forget about ergonomic keyboards. They are just a crutch for the inefficiencies of Qwerty.

It's probably me, I rushed so hungry for touch typing that my body cannot catch up the pace.

Simon, I agree, the reversed slope on MS4000 is only to ease qwerty typing. I am actualy thinking of some flat but split keyboard.

Funny thing what I saw once was a guy that typed qwerty with right hand mowed one key leftwards - his home row was ASDF HJKL.

Yes, I do believe that you missed something here Simon. Jammycakes' statement "In my experience, QWERTY is better on A than B, whereas Colemak is better on B than A" does not translate into "QWERTY is better than Colemak". I read it to mainly mean that James found Colemak to work well on an ergonomic board, as he's said before. No idea how you read it?

That's an interesting thought. Now, my Colemak has nothing against my wrists and vice versa; maybe that's just because I use the bottom row half shift?

The one thing I do find gets awkward about using a straight board and straight wrists, is reaching for the corner positions GJ - I think Shai was right when he suggested that those two get more difficult by keeping the wrists straight. I suppose that a proper curved board would fix that. Meanwhile, the J is happily rare enough and I feel that I'm getting the hang of the G eventually. It's not so much that it hurts to type or gets mistyped a lot, but it takes a bit too long and just doesn't feel right like most of the other keys do.

This hasn't happened to me, but I have a tendency to switch to 6 or 8 finger typing and not use my pinkies or ring fingers as much. This puts the strain on my wrists instead.