a new alternative - AlphaGrip

[dongadoy]

AlphaGrip is an alternative keyboard that was recently released. This is not a solution for those needing or wanting zero-force keyboard. But it does have lots of features that I am looking for.

• It has much fewer keys and uses modifiers to get the other keys of a standard keyboard; that means less finger, hand, wrist, and arm movement.
• It has an integrated trackball for mousing; that saves all that reaching for a mouse or other desktop pointing device.
• It has tactile feedback, which I expect is the reason I have so much trouble typing on my LP.
• It has a more ergonomic arm and wrist position.

I suspect they have a supply issue - it's so new; it may be a long time between ordering and receiving. At the moment, I'm just thinking about purchasing the AlphaGrip. But I already purchased some programmable keypads to experiment with. So I'm not sure what I'll do. But I thought others might be interested.

It's not as bad as I feared. Development of alternative two-handed keyboards has not stagnated - not totally, anyway.

[ivanw]

Now, I know for sure that I am definitely insane, suffering from a compelling urge to feed my monomania on keyboards. Yes, and I should have guessed it right away, this one got me too! In some way I am happy to hear about AlphaGrip only now. I don't know why I've missed this story since it started at the beginning of the century but I am glad it happened this way. I have had my contempt of expectation and eagerness with my FingerWorks quest last year.

After your message, I've spent the week-end at reading about the AlphaGrip AG-5 saga. It has a taste a lot like the TouchStream story, a lot of thinking and devoted energy from the inventor side. I had a good feeling while reading his President's Message to those who supported him during pre-production stages -- to be read bottom-up.

As a warning for those like me that have a weakness on the keyboard side of their brain, make sure you don't have a look to theses pages at all! Neither to those forum live stories on this new born community. That would not be advisable. And don't go there to buy it like I did.

More things not to look at:

• News video
• Typing Demo

As a side note, all the buzz around the Urban legend of QWERTY meant to slow down quick typist is fairly supported in many occasion here!

[dongadoy]

LOL!

But you do make a serious point. This is reminiscent of TouchStream. We have no idea how long this keyboard will be around. We train our fingers to the bone for months, only to find our efforts wasted when it comes to replace the keyboard in three years and it has bit the dust.

<wishful_thinking>If only that small and loyal following will change to large and loyal following. One of these products just has to survive!</wishful_thinking>

I look forward to your comments when you receive your AlphaGrip.

[Max]

I too look forwards to your comments whet you get yours.

Out of interest, has anyone ever used a datahand?

[ivanw]

No, I won't go Datahand right now But I would like to read about it first hand too.

Currently, I am getting involved in the usenet community gathering around AlphaGrip and my work suffers from that because, just like the TouchStream, this is quite fascinating.

I have to watch myself in order to avoid getting nuts with all that buzz. Datahand would have me passed out from overdose.

[ivanw]

Well, it looks like I won't get my new toy this soon, in a few weeks at best. But, as it seems I'm not the only one interested by this kind of gadgets, I want to share what I have found so far.

We could play with those guys whose frame of mind is rather close to FW users. We can't talk about our TS to them, that would be waste of time or archeology chatter at best.

I would rather say that I've already gathered valuable information about another opportunity to make good use of the smart Autohotkey utility: The Andersen Remap.

I am not familiar with this level of programming of AutoHotkey (yet) but I am close to believe that it may be possible to transform an ordinary keyboard into a chording device with a -simple- script!

This means that we would be able to transpose some amount of TouchStream behavior to any other keyboard we may use. This is a simple matter of installing the utility and have a clickable icon to switch some ahk-script on and off.

[ivanw]

What a silence since a few days!

So, I will talk about something...

It happened all over again, I've found something challenging enough to have fun!
Although I am still waiting for my Grip, I could play with chording
customization on a standard keyboard and an AutoHotkey script.

It can be touchy but it works fine!
You can hold a couple of keys with one hand and pretend it is a kind of
modifier that makes what you type with the other hand send a keycode
other than the default.
Shift Control and Alt are not even affected by this mapping.

If you are not afraid of getting caught by this, have a look there...

Next move will have me play guitar on my qwertycaster.

[Rqyteqto]

Will your band be named the Fingers? If so, might I suggest the ubiquitous gesture such a name brings to mind for adoption as your logo as a symbol of your defiance of the 'normal' world?

[ivanw]

Will your band be named the Fingers? If so, might I suggest the ubiquitous gesture such a name brings to mind for adoption as your logo as a symbol of your defiance of the 'normal' world?

[ivanw]

Hi Rqyteqto,
I had to make this post tonight because it makes me the top one of the top ten posters in this forums today

Still, I'm going to put something useful in the envelope...(in case some of you missed this one! )

[hey, this is a joke]

There are things that make me think that humanity has a real purpose, and that american people are definitely one step ahead!

[/hey, this is a joke]

[Rqyteqto]

I am mystified by the link. What does it mean?

And if we are one step ahead, perhaps its because everyone else is facing the other way.

As to a purpose for humans, I am still searching. I have yet to find any other than self amusement.

[ivanw]

(...)As to a purpose for humans, I am still searching. I have yet to find any other than self amusement.

This is the only thing that makes sense when you think about this clip!