Among the most advanced users of keyboard typing are stenographers, who can reach speeds of up to 300 words per minute with specialized keyboards. For mortals who use the traditional QWERTY keyboard, a teacher’s speed is close to 120 words per minute or, on average, 40 for the rest of us; however, CharaChorder is an amazing and strange keyboard, whose creators claim that can drive almost anyone to type at the mind-boggling speed of 500 words per minute or what they call, writing at the speed of thought. How is this possible?
As you already realized from the photo, calling the CharaChorder “keyboard” is more of a help for those who see it and do not understand what it is for. The curious device is made up of two hand grips, connected by a bar. For each hand we have a set of nine joystics that can be moved in all directions. Unlike a conventional keyboard where we must press the keys, with this device our fingers never lift, saving time.
CharaChorder’s operation is based on the same principles of classic shorthand, but taken to another level. For example, each of the 18 joystics is assigned a group of letters from which we choose one of them depending on the direction in which you move them. But the magic is in an auto-complete softwarewhich interprets the letters we are selecting (usually out of order and at the same time), and rearranges them to build words at high speed, so not everything is in the “hands” of the user, but rather it is a job shared between human and machine.
As you can imagine, using the CharaChorder is not easy at all at first. This is a job that has its learning curve for those who are very committed to taking their typing speed to another level. However, those who have already had the opportunity to use it for a long period of time say that once it is mastered, it is difficult to want to return to conventional keyboards.
At the moment the CharaChorder is a somewhat expensive product (about $250 dollars per unit), since the company is still a starter, but it hopes that its products will soon gain popularity and its price may come down. In fact, this year they participated in CES and won the award for the noteworthy new product.
Likewise, for those who believe that the CharaChorder is too extreme, they have designed a light version called CharaChorder Lite.which is much more similar to a conventional keyboardbut with the help of its powerful auto-complete software, which also allows for great typing speeds.
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