I'm just unconvinced. Dvorak might speed up my typing a bit, but I doubt that raw typing speed is a bottleneck for my work, and I doubt that the time saved will justify the sheer amount of time and trouble required to learn and practice the Dvorak layout. Meanwhile, I'm suspicious of the claims of a big ergonomic advantage. I'm not saying that the people who claim to feel better when using Dvorak are wrong -- but I'm not convinced that their results are generally applicable, nor that they necessarily rise above the level of the placebo effect.

I suspect that any time I would spend learning Dvorak would be better spent in figuring out how to get through life by doing less typing in the first place.

In theory, I could argue against the Kinesis in the same terms, but the investment required to come up to speed on the Kinesis is smaller (just a couple of days in my case). And many of its ergonomic advantages -- hands further apart, wrists at better angles, better use of the thumbs, less stretch for the pinkies because their keys are physically closer to them -- are unachievable with any other keyboard, no matter which keymap you use. I would certainly recommend trying a Kinesis before learning Dvorak -- if you're dead set on becoming the smoothest keyboarder in the world, there's no reason not to use both.

Fair enough.