Switched to Dvorak, Switched Back to Qwerty

There's a discussion on Slashdot today about a new keyboard that only has 53 keys that are arranged in alphabetical order. Of course, this has people going at it again about Dvorak vs. Qwerty. I chimed in to the discussion with the following:

I used to do phone support for a now defunct brand of PCs. This was circa 1997/1998. The job was mind numbingly boring. I'd heard how great Dvorak was supposed to be. I saved a Dvorak keyboard layout in my home directory and I would configure the machines I logged into with it and I started logging my calls typing with the Dvorak layout. It took me about 6 weeks to be able to type Dvorak as easily as I had done Qwerty, and the new challenge of trying to keep up with my work load with the new keyboard layout helped stave off some of the incessant boredom. I honestly didn't notice any difference in my speed, comfort level, etc. What I did notice was that when I used a computer that I couldn't easily switch to Dvorak, I was back to being a hunt and peck typist. This turned out to be a major PITA. Finally, I gave up and switched back to Qwerty. It took me longer to relearn Qwerty than it did to learn Dvorak, but in the end, it was worth it as I could now use 100% of keyboards I came across. I'm willing to go against the grain in a lot of ways. I'm a Mac user, a vegetarian, an agnostic, and bleeding heart liberal, but the fight against Qwerty keyboard layouts was a cause that turned out to just not be worth it. Too little return on investment for the effort involved.