Introduction | Ergomatic Keyboard | Features & Benefits | Layout Options | Future | FAQs

Significance and Future Plans

If you have been sufficiently interested by the amazing story contained in the history, such as to read it all, you may be a competitor that is amazed that we would share all of our development ideas and reveal what some would call proprietary information. Or, you could be one that wonders, as we do, why obsolete shapes and key layouts persist in a modern world that stopped building mechanical typewriters many years ago.

If you are either of the above, you will wonder what our future thinking suggests is to follow our introduction of the Ergomatic keyboard as a product made on this side of the Atlantic Ocean for sale in all of North and South America.

We have established that we can help people in pain- those who need a way to continue to use a keyboard. The past sales of Maltron Eregonomic keybords or the new Ergomatic seems to make some people contend that it is therapeutic! Of course, we can't claim such without enormous cost and controlled study. Such study may never happen unless some university decides that it is an important project. Meanwhile our satisfied users make the question academic!

Suffice it to say that the Ergomatic shape is easy to operate and that experienced qwerty keyboarders can learn to fit their hands and fingers to the this shape in a short period of time -- usually about two hours of practice. Once the brain knows this unit, it is able to move the hands back to other computer keyboards that have keys bunched together with a diagonal relationship between the rows as was required when manual typewriters had mechanical links underneath the keys to the hammers that pressed the relief type image against an inked ribbon. It is no more difficult to do this than to drive two different makes of car or play two instruments.

But, the second attribute of the Malt studies deals with the invention of the Malt layout of the keytops, an arrangement that lets users key the same message with 90% less finger travel and with a usual 30% increase in throughput. We do not expect to get many who are proficient qwerty keyboarders to want to learn a new layout. If you are one of the 95% of operators that key by 'hunt and peck,' you are probably not interested in learning any touch system, unless you have a new need to do so.

Who then will want to use the more effective Malt layout? Answer: Mostly those that are young and want to use a better tool for life -- one that is ergonomically correct for both the mind and the body!

For us to produce such a unit instead of our former production of units that can drive either the PC or the Mac computer, but not both from the same unit, we made some major changes. First, we had to equip one keyboard with a cables that mates to either type of computer and include on-board software that knows which one is in place so the right signals will come forth!

Second, we had to make the Ergomatic portable, so folks who learn the Malt layout can know that they can carry it with them and not depend upon finding the 'new fangled' layout waiting for them. This requires a carrying case as an optional extra.

The hardest part was to build the unit in an efficient way that drives unit cost down to the point where customers will pay the price. This was not easy with a unit that has the above attributes and is also a three dimensional shape that requires a 3-D connection between key switches mounted to mate with the human hand in the comfortable way that a good ergonomic layout should!

The good news is that we did it and can now market to those that can pay $175 for the expanded ability of the Ergomatic that can drive either the PC or the Mac. We hope that you will be one to learn and to use the Malt layout with the training program now available on this site to use or to download to use "off-line."

Once we can offer this option with all of the above improvements in place, the world will begin to see a growing array of users that will decide to abandon the obsolete qwerty layout as well as the potentially harmful flat shape with keys arranged in a diagonal pattern that promotes finger stress! Someday the obsolete layout will be history. We hope that you will be one of those who made it so!