Alright, so I've been toying with the idea of learning Dvorak. It's an internal struggle, really. Part of me is like "Hey, Dvorak is less stressful on the hands and everything, and possibly faster", while the other part of me says "Oh, but nobody else uses it, and you'd have to change it on every computer you use that isn't yours."

So, I'm hoping that Dvorak users and ex-users will post with their thoughts on it. I'm looking for both the positive and negative sides of Dvorak.

I'd also REALLY like to know if it's pretty easy to switch the brain and fingers from Dvorak to QWERTY in those times when it's not feasible to make a software/hardware switch. Is it like being fluent in two languages, and you can just switch back and forth on the fly? Or does a move to Dvorak really impair your QWERTY abilities?

Just, everybody post, it'll be nice to get thoughts from the community.

how the hell do you type like that?

I have no personal experience, but have a good friend who uses DVORAK on his personal computers. He says he has no problem switching to and from dvorak. He might hit some wrong keys for the first couple of minutes, but nothing severe. He doesn't seem to think it's a problem.

How the hell do you type with a QWERTY? It's memorization and repetition. QWERTY was actually designed to slow typists down, back in the days of manual typewriters. Of course, typists overcame the QWERTY system and sped up to typing speeds that jammed the keys.

i am writing this in dvorak and it feels really weird

I used Dvorak for about a year on my powerbook. I didn't actually train when I switched so I never built up my speed, but I was pretty comfortable after a month or so. And it kept other people from using my laptop. (I actually popped off my keyes and re-arranged them)
Most people don't really get much faster unless they train intensivley for a month or more. But it is a lot less strain on the hands.
What I noticed, and this I found odd, was that I didn't want to switch to Dvorak on other computers, on reason was because it felt like I was really fast on QWERTY after switching. When I used QWERTY on computers like in the CLCs I was faster than I was before switching. The thing is that I really never learned how to type in QWERTY so that speed was all from using computers in my free time.

To sum up, it's not too hard to adjust to, but don't do it for speed, only do it if you want the comfort. Sometimes you write whole sentences without leaving homerow.

I got bored and did what zerf did and switched all the keys on my powerbook