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Vaniver comments on Spend Money on Ergonomics - Less Wrong
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Carpalx, which I linked to in another comment, is keyboard optimization software (as well as several recommended layouts that it outputs). You can train it on whatever corpus you want- and so if you run a keylogger for a week or so, you'll be able to get a keyboard layout that's optimized for the things you type.
Right, but that's even more awkward in terms of portability.
Do note that portability is basically a non-issue. If you expect to spend one-twentieth of your typing time on other computers (an insanely high estimate even for a backwards company's "IT guy") and we pessimistically assume that learning a new layout will magically reduce your old layout skills to hunt-and-peck[1], the gain in speed only has to be something like 5 wpm before it drowns out the lost speed on old layouts.
[1]: This is not supported by my experiences; two of my close friends have remapped to Dvorak and their QWERTY skills only mildly deteriorated. None of the concerns you have raised have been a problem for them; although one thing that did happen is it became impossible for any of us QWERTY users to type on their computers (something they quite enjoy).
That basically happened to me. I've switched away from QWERTY in 2006 and really only ever use it if I fix something on my mother's computer. Previously I was typing at 80-90wpm, now I don't even know where the keys are anymore. I could maybe get back to 30wpm with a week of practice, but most of my QWERTY skill is gone.
I don't spend 1/20th of my typing time on computers I don't control, no. But I do think the time I spend on other computers is more likely to be particularly time critical, and I don't expect to get any real speed gain from the transition as my work is generally more thought or compute bound than typing-bound (data entry might be sped up significantly, but I don't spend 1/1000th of my time at the computer doing data entry).
They aren't married, are they? My wife complains enough about my running ratpoison...
Sure, and learning a different layout would make it even more thought- / compute-bound.
It doesn't work like that. Typing does not take conscious thought - it is overlapped with my thinking. Speeding up my typing even tenfold would not significantly speed up my output.
If your typing speed increased tenfold, you would go from "generally thought/compute bound" to "always thought/compute bound".
Except when bound by something unrelated. My point is that the gains are minimal, and putting my optimization effort there is ridiculous from a speed perspective - that's not how you do optimization, if you want to do it well. If there are actually large RSI gains to be had, that's another matter.