My research:
Qwerty has never worked very well for me. Never comfortable. Played with dvorak and liked it, somehow vowels on the home row of one hand seemed to work for me. Made the change to the Kinesis Advantage and as I was farting around with qwerty and making a switch to dvorak, I saw Colemak and tried it. It is a little right hand biased, but it works very well (for me). Stayed with it. I may take the time to look at some info on the 'fully optimized Colemak', or maybe even do a complete layout change to something else, but I don't know what that motivation would be. Faster typing? Easier typing? Not much difference that I can notice at this point.
I like the carpalx website and all the various links/sources/info/etc. Fascinating stuff until I use my Datahand and laugh it all off, as it doesn't really apply any longer at that level. I think anything is better than qwerty for me. I'm sure there is better/worse out of the contenders, but a lot of it seems to be splitting hairs. Your hand cramping could be an indicator of something you need to be very cautious about. I can see how the research portion would be of great importance, but if your hand cramps, who cares what the research says???
YOU are the research.
