(retro music)
- Okay. So this is the DataHand Personal.
It's a keyboard.
It's weird.
There's no getting around that.
But, it's weird for a reason.
It's more ergonomic, more comfortable,
and can even make you a faster typer,
or so they claim.
So did DataHand systems go out of business
because this is an awful idea, a bad product,
or is this bizarre board from 1995,
the absolute best input device you can't buy?
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(upbeat music)
Like many modern ergonomic keyboards,
the DataHand takes a split board approach.
It has two modules that can be freely positioned
however you like, according to your own personal neck.
Connected by an 18 inch D-sub cable
that you'll have to buy an extension for
if you want to take advantage of the quarter inch threads
on the bottom of the modules.
Like, if you want to mount them to your chair
or to the included lap-lander.
At its core, the DataHand aims to reduce
the amount of movement and force required
to register a key stroke.
It's designed so that your hands are resting comfortably
on these cushy palm rests, placing very little strain
on the carpal tunnel muscles.
And instead of having your fingers curling and contorting
in unnatural ways to reach keys,
the DataHand has individual wells for each digit,
where each keystroke requires only a half-inch
of travel for your fingers.
And each finger can press down,
or in any of the four cardinal directions.
The switches are optical,
with the keys relying on magnets to snap back into place.
They're super sensitive though,
to the point where accidental key presses
are really hard to avoid,
and sometimes even when your hands are just resting on them,
you'll suddenly get a bunch of S's going across your screen.
More on the learning curve in a minute.
But, as for ergonomics,
having each finger do less work while moving
in many directions, other than one repetitive stroke,
is a definite plus.
Each module can be adjusted for different hand sizes,
by raising, tilting, or rocking the key wells.
And by choosing between small and large palm rests
at the time of ordering.
So it's ergonomic as heck,
but can it help you type faster?
It seems like it could in theory,
but the question is,
"How long would it take you to get there?"
- It should be used to control a giant Mac.
- Yeah, there is PS2 on the other side of that, okay.
- We're going to lttstore.com?
That's my task?
I wanna go to Monkeytype.
That's delete.
That's restart.
No, this is, that's back.
- This is incredibly difficult.
- [Taran] How do I get to blue mode?
- Oh, (bleep), there's another typo.
- [Anthony] Oh God.
Over.
No, no, I did it.
- [Employee] Well, that's a terrible mouse experience.
- Can I stop now?
- [James] Yeah, you can stop now.
- Yeah, I never want to use that again.
- Despite it being a completely different typing paradigm,
the designers did try and make it familiar.
The layout is derived from the QWERTY layout
with most key clusters corresponding to letters
that you're used to hitting with that same finger.
However, it's not a perfect translation,
and you can see why,
T, Y, N and B on a regular keyboard
are kind of in no man's land,
so these have to be moved to other random fingers,
which definitely takes some getting used to.
Same goes with symbols,
enjoy learning to type in apostrophe
with your left hand's middle finger.
Then you've got the thumb clusters.
They've got modifiers for switching layers,
not unlike pressing shift on a QWERTY keyboard
except there's four layers.
Granted, one of those is a mouse,
which is awful, please God no,
but at least it's there for people who need it.
But when combined with the atypical layout,
all of this makes the whole thing pretty damn alien,
when you first sit down with it to be frank.
Jesse who typically types at
between 120 on 130 words per minute on a QWERTY
and got to around 40 words per min on an ErgoDox,
after a day of usage,
tried the DataHand and after a half day,
their best score was just three words per minute.
You just can't have someone on your payroll
typing that slowly, it's bad.
In DataHand's own advertising,
they say that it only takes a short time
to get up to speed on the DataHand.
But a short time is relative.
This guy who ran a DataHand as his daily driver back in '99,
said it took him over a month to get up to speed,
and that was after actually taking time off work
to get used to it.
That's a pretty steep cost.
But then again, you can't put a price on health.
- [Jessie] Except in the states.
- Except in the states.
So let's say you're sold,
should you rush out and buy your very own DataHand?
That's tricky because the company
stopped selling them in 2008.
Well, how about secondary markets?
E-bay, Craigslist, maybe Reddit, if you're lucky.
The boards are out there,
but they can be hard to find.
We only got this one because someone donated it to us
completely out of the blue
after being interested in. it for years,
but maybe there's another way.
A small, but very dedicated group
is looking to revive the spirit of the DataHand
with their own projects like Ben Gruver's lalboard,
an open source keyboard.
You can 3D print and build yourself.
Here's Ben typing at 120 words per minute on one,
which is times faster than the average person can do
on a standard QWERTY,
all without wrist extension and ulnar deviation.
I have to admit, part of me really wants to get into this,
but maybe the DataHand failed for a reason.
Without a public statement from the company
or a reply to my LinkedIn message to the founder,
we can only speculate on what led
to this curious keyboard's demise.
But what we do know is that this device
targeted a relatively narrow demographic
and costs between 500 and 1,300 dollars
depending on which model you bought and when,
which is really expensive, even for ergo keyboards,
which are often in the $400 range today,
this means that DataHand relied on
a limited number of sales with one core product,
plus a few wacky accessories like the data chair.
But in my opinion, the learning curve,
must've been a big contributor to the low demand.
You needed some serious issues
to justify investing the time and the money required
for this ultimate ergonomic solution.
But today, today maybe you just need to be a nerd,
for my part, I'm really interested in this concept,
but I'd like to see some changes
like perhaps an integrated trackball mouse
for the people who need it,
instead of this cartesian ball spit,
I hate the mouse,
and maybe a more optimized layout
that doesn't even try to be QWERTY,
because it's already ridiculous to learn anyway.
So you might as well just use something that,
I don't know, it puts all the vowels
on your strongest fingers or something,
but for everyone else who needs an ergonomic solution,
that's not so life-changing,
just get an ErgoDox, Moonlander or something.
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So thanks for watching guys,
If you liked this video,
we have a bunch of other weird keyboard reviews,
check out the one that has no keys at all.
That was fun to learn.