According to this, the spread out keys of QWERTY can actually be faster because you often switch hands while typing on QWERTY (and language adapted variants like AZERTY):
http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
I have a friend who used Dvorak keyboards for many years, but he finally gave up and went back to QWERTY because the "wrong reflexes" slowed him down when using a standard keyboard, which he could not avoid completely.