Someone, I forget who, pointed to an old article on Ask Tog, Keyboard vs. The Mouse, pt 1. I found it particularly interesting to read that:

• Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
• The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.

I’ve always been of the mind that GUIs are faster than command lines for any task which you don’t do often enough to know off by heart. I imagine the same applies in this case – any task you perform often enough to learn the keyboard shortcut off by heart is faster by keyboard shortcut, otherwise using the mouse is faster. Unfortunately, this means that when you begin using a new command frequently, you have to go through a period of slower use in order to learn the keyboard shortcut, after which you should be faster.

However, the article suggests, but doesn’t outright state, that keyboard shortcuts are always slower which I find really quite odd. Perhaps that’s not what’s meant by the article, or perhaps I’m suffering from the two second amnesia and keyboard shortcuts really are always slower. I’m particularly intrigued to see if anyone has actual user data that shows that keyboard shortcuts are faster, and when they are.