I spent a lot of time on this, back in my bored 20's. A super-optimized keyboard layout, which I used for a year. I measured my typing speed on qwerty before the change, and on the optimized keyboard after using it for a year.
Yep, you do type faster. In my case, it was 10%. Honestly, it wasn't worth it. There are way too many disadvantages, not least of which is the fact that that only your computer has your weird keyboard. Also, typing 10% faster is pretty irrelevant: how much of your time are you typing flat-out?
If you need an ergonomic keyboard, that's a different thing. There are lots of those. Get one that uses qwerty.
Yep, you do type faster. In my case, it was 10%. Honestly, it wasn't worth it. There are way too many disadvantages, not least of which is the fact that that only your computer has your weird keyboard. Also, typing 10% faster is pretty irrelevant: how much of your time are you typing flat-out?
If you need an ergonomic keyboard, that's a different thing. There are lots of those. Get one that uses qwerty.