40 WPM is somewhat better than the population average. So unless you count most people as beginners (which may or may not make sense) you're better than a beginner and qualify as at least 'average'.

Maybe I should see whether my Dvorak skills still...? nah, can't be arsed I'm afraid.

DreymaR have you tried?... ;)

OK, it was week on qwerty. It's really interesting, at this point my long run speed on qwerty is ~35WPM 99% accuracy. I started to wonder about doing some alternative fingering for speed optimization, but whatever I tried only seemed faster - in fact I was only slower...

The big advantage was the end of confuse "what layout is now..". Overall, developing software was easy, as easy as on Dvorak - no much difference, but I was striving away from writing comments, emails etc. Thats the truth, writing on qwerty is not so hard if you do not force yourself for speed and you use standard fingering, nontheless you do not like doing it... With Dvorak layout writing regular texts sometimes makes me even pleasure like playing a game for entretainment :-)

Anyway, I summarized my experiences, read again through the forum, and I wonder what next... Right now I am thinking of buying a mechanical keyboard and try a week on Colemak ;-) Generally I liked Colemak layout, but I got tired writing on it, probably more than on qwerty. After reading through recent posts some enlighment come, I think that the tiredness (and even little pain) comes form bouncing my middle and ring fingers hard on the keyboard - it is because the fingers are longer and the layout makes freqent rolls with all the fingers on the home row. I think that maybe Logitech wave keybords bring a remedy for colemak. Whilst the keyboard is not split to help the wrists, the qwerty SD and KL keys are sunken on the surface.

On the other hand I wonder why I am so nerd wasting so much time trying the layouts ;-) I can't help...

Just have tried colemak today - how to ease the fatigue?! It is not the frustration of new layout, it feels just hard to type in a long run. Hmm, let's see if slow start can help, I will practise it only for a 2 minutes (on higames) each day, maybe that is the miracle how I could start qwerty without painful learning?

Colemak is spreading everywhere, lots of people have tried it and lots says about difficult start, lots benefits from the switch and lots have abandoned it. I hope some nerd physician will make thorough research on it someday.

One game that didn't frustrate me much was Air Typer - it's fairly forgiving even for a newbie typist.

But the main thing is just not to get frustrated! Don't expect too much, don't overdo it, don't sweat it. It'll come to you. How long it will take is highly individual; some learn to type fast in months, others take years.

lol why does the o not work?  Also what type of learning game lets u pass with out one? lol from here on I am typing for the sake of typing!  Colemak is fun!  I wish that I did not make so many typos though :(.  OK Im done.

o ok that makes it more clear.  Just wondering if it is better to learn a little at a time or to just use the layout to learn it?  I realize that it probably varies by person but if any one can give their preferences I would appreciate it.