Decaflon

I decided to learn an alternate keyboard layout called Colemak a while back, and it wasn't too difficult. I printed out this colored fingering diagram and taped it to my monitor and ran through the lessons on TypeFaster. I'm sure a lot of the tips on their website would be equally helpful for learning Dvorak.

BTW, if you're not set on learning Dvorak, I would definitely recommend Colemak. You can compare them here.

Could someone tell me why one would learn a new keyboard layout other than keeping people off their computers? Is there some optimized format that allows for faster typing or something?

I knew BoingBoing would come in handy eventually - they recently put up a link to this site which explains the whole Dvorak history in comic form, and at the end gives you a print-out guide to help you learn. Simply refer to the guide when looking for keys instead of looking at the keyboard. As any touch-typist will tell you, the more you look at the keys you are typing instead of relying on muscle memory, the slower you will be.

As for the benefits of Dvorak? I haven't played around enough with it myself (though I am tempted, if only to freak out people at work) but purportedly it's much faster and a lot easier on RSI prone wrists & fingers.

The querty keyboard was designed specifically so that metal keys in typewriters wouldn't jam.

I believe that it was also so that demonstrators could easily type "TYPEWRITER" on it--all of the letters are in the top row.

Dvorak takes ergonomics and the English language into consideration as well, placing the most-used keys on the home row and the second-most-used keys on the upper row.

There are two major differences between Dvorak and Colemak. 1- In addition to ergonomics and the English language, Colemak was designed with finger combinations in mind, so it tries to minimize the number of times that consecutive letters will happen for the same finger, potentially allowing you to type faster. Dvorak, I believe was designed so that you use alternating hands more often. 2- Colemak was designed with QWERTY users in mind, so it is easier to learn and switch to. Most importantly, they keep a bunch of keys that are often used for keyboard shortcuts in the same place: Q, W, Z, X, C, V, and B.

Hummm, that Colemak thing looks promising. And it does look promising for pissing off those who use your computer.