Bye, Bye QWERTY, Hello ABCD;

By Barry Gerber

Many people don't like today's standard QWERTY keyboard. The main flame is that the keys are organized in a meaningless way. History or perhaps myth has it that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typing speed. That way typists wouldn't jam two or more of the metal bars on a mechanical typewriter that held the letters that, along with an inked ribbon, made visible impressions on a piece of paper. Whatever the reason for QWERTY, its detractors have been trying to design the better mousetrap for a long, long time. The NSK 535 line of keyboards from New Standard Keyboards is the latest "QWERTY killer."

Designed over a nine year period by New Standards Keyboards founder John Parkinson, NSK 535s come in two colour schemes, silver and rainbow. The silver one is kind of blah, but functional. The rainbow version uses colour to help you get used to the keyboard and how it works. For example, indigo (dark purple) keys are for movement. The indigo key with the two right pointing arrows is the Tab key. The indigo key with the down arrow is the Enter key. The two indigo keys on the bottom row with single right pointing arrows are Space keys.

Continuing with the colour scheme, groupings of key colours have similar functions. Green, blue and indigo keys type characters. Red, orange and yellow keys make changes. Red keys are destructive of text and should be used with caution. Orange keys make other keys do their thing; yellow keys change the characters typed by other keys. Finally, purple keys move the cursor.

Left side

Right side

To type upper case letters, press one of the two Cap keys and type the letter. For Caps Lock, press the Cap key twice; unlock with a single press of the Cap key. You'll notice that there are no lock lights: Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock. New Standard Keyboards argues the goal of the 535 keyboards is for all to type without looking at the keyboard. Lock lights, the company argues, are unnecessary when this goal is reached.