People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement.

It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist.

While the keyboard users in this case feels as though they have gained two seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is really the case. Because while the keyboard users have been engaged in a process so fascinating that they have experienced amnesia, the mouse users have been so disengaged that they have been able to continue thinking about the task they are trying to accomplish. They have not had to set their task aside to think about or remember abstract symbols.

Keyboard shortcuts are so much more efficient than using the mouse. Only problem: They're hard to remember, especially the ones you don't use all that often. Same goes for things like Terminal commands, Twitter search syntax, multitouch gestures or anything else you can't simply point and click a mouse at.<br />
That's where dashkards come in. Dashkards are cheat sheets you can add to your Mac OS X Dashboard and have them handy at the press of a button. Click on a thumbnail below to view it in full size and add the dashkard to your Dashboard.

The only thing I miss from Firefox is the Merge All Windows function. You could hit “⌘-SHIFT-M” and all your windows would be gathered in one window with tabs. (Though, now I can't find this feature and I'm wondering if it was a plugin I'd used.)

Google Instant promises to save you up to 5 seconds every time you search the Web, but you'll only see those savings if you know how to take advantage of its new real-time mind-reading. Here are the must-know keyboard shortcuts for zipping your way around Google Instant predictions and results.

TextExpander saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used text strings and images.

If there's one thing we never tire of, it's exploiting hidden features within an operating system. Today, we take a look at the Mac's Option key (also known as Alt), and all the hidden goodness that comes with it.

"Our story concerns the history of the standard typewriter keyboard, commonly known as QWERTY, and its more recent rival, the Dvorak keyboard."