I'd like to share some products and techniques which have helped me deal with daily intense computer use:

I learned to type Dvorak and did so for months. It got to match my Qwerty, about 100 WPM. I didn't find that it provided much advantage overall.

Note that you can type Dvorak on most modern keyboards with software settings -- in Windows for example, you can just change the key layout and it will start acting like a Dvorak keyboard.

The best advantage I got from learning Dvorak wa san opportunity to re-learn proper finger positioning. As a result, my form in Dvorak is better than Qwerty (which developed organically and is not correct). I never saw much of a substantial overall improvement, despite months of use. If you'd like to speed up your typing, look to improve your finger positioning (primarily: not taking the index/middle fingers away from the home row under any circumstances).

The biggest disadvantage from Dvorak is that it moves characters such as Z,X,C,V. I was not able to effectively re-learn the "undo cut copy paste" commands. I was not able to find a good way to categorically customize them across applications (which is really disappointing -- why can't the OS handle mapping physical keys to common logical commands like undo?)

In the past year I got a Kinesis Advantage contoured keyboard: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm - once I got it, what a breath of fresh air!

It took significantly longer than Dvorak to learn, because Space/Delete and all the control characters move to your thumbs. However, I was eventually able to achieve about a 25% speedup. Their customer service was also good.

The keyboard is arranged so that finger movement distance is reduced. I feel much more "flow" typing on a Kinesis. The keys roll off your fingers in a long, continuous, fluid stream. Despite the long learning curve, if you type daily for your work, I highly recommend making the investment.

I also highly recommend the 3M ergonomic mouse: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/ergonomics/home/... - together with the Kinesis, these two products and a standing desk entirely resolved some minor repetitive stress problems I had developed through years of daily intense computer use.

I found that I needed to keep a regular mouse and keyboard for gaming and precision applications. My use of the 3M mouse has never approached the level of accuracy of a normal mouse, since it is deliberately designed to use the larger, stronger, but less accurate muscles of the arm to move it (rather than lower forearm/hand). But importantly, it has freed my hand from any repetitive stress problems.

For precision mouse work, I prefer the Razor: http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/DisplayHomeP... - I was skeptical about Razor products initially but took the plunge a few months ago. Razor's mouse is really excellent and has perfect feel. It really is an improvement on the standard vanilla office mouse. I think it has high measurement accuracy, and they seem to have greatly tuned the way velocity/acceleration/jerk translate into cursor movement; the cursor more closely matches my intention than with other mice (as rated by performance on http://dagobah.net/flash/Cursor_Invisible.swf ). My favorite "regular layout" is Das Keyboard: http://www.daskeyboard.com/

(I have no affiliation or commission with any of the providers of those products; I'm evangelizing them purely as a satisfied customer.)