From My Perspective, Mar 23

Add-On Keyboards for Palm and Pocket PC

Makers of both Palm and Pocket PC devices offer external fold-up clip-on keyboards for their devices. For example, Palm offers the Ultra-Thin Keyboard for its Palm devices with the universal connector, and HP offers the iPAQ Foldable Keyboard for its iPAQ line. My favorite for is the Palm Ultra-Thin for two reasons:

• Usability: Both keyboards enable touch typing, but the Ultra-Thin wins for one specific reason: the positioning of the right-hand shift key on the Stowaway is all wrong ... instead of finding the shift key, one's little finger rests on an arrow key ... which causes the cursor to jump to very strange places during text entry on the iPAQ. The Palm variant works as expected. Entry of numbers is a bit slow, due to having to hold down a function key, but it works great.
• Carry-ability: The Palm Ultra-Thin wins here. It folds in half, and has a smaller form factor than its iPAQ cousin. The iPAQ Stowaway is thicker and deeper, although not as wide.
• Connectability: The iPAQ keyboard wins in terms of establishing a physical connection with the iPAQ. The connector enables the iPAQ to be slotted onto the keyboard with a minimal of fuss. The Ultra-Thin, however, is very fiddly ... it usually takes me 6-12 seconds to get the two connected, and I have to pick up the keyboard and Palm and look very closely to get them to fit together. Palm needs to address this major shortcoming.

Regardless of which one you choose, both keyboards significantly raise the functionality of handheld devices for text entry, particularly during meetings.

The Palm Ultra-Thin Keyboard: