less useful than you might think

When I finally took the plunge into the world of PDAs, one of the biggest things on my mind was how I was going to get data into the thing. All of my coworkers and friends who had them swore up and down that it was easy to get used to Graffiti, and that keyboards only slowed things down, but I was dubious, and wanted the ability to keypunch data. At the same time, I have to admit that my past experiences with an add-on keyboard for my old Ericsson cell phone was not encouraging. Hunt and peck to the extreme.

But when I decided to purchase my Tungsten T5, one of the offers that was running at the time was a free infrared keyboard with purchase of the unit. "How bad could it be, for free," I thought, and signed on the dotted line.

The answer is, "Not bad. But not great, either."

The first thing about this keyboard is that the keys are just the wrong size. Much larger than the itty bitty keys prevalent on PDAs which feature the keyboard on the device itself, but small enough to make touch typing a chore, because my fingers kept hitting the wrong keys. Also, in their haste to reduce the keyboard's size, they gave it next to no tactile feedback. It is quite difficult when using this thing to know when your keystroke has registered.

Once I got used to it, these issues became less important, although still fairly annoying. But the most consistent problem I had with this unit was its mode of operation. Infrared devices, by definition, need a line of site connection to each other. The T5's infrared port is at the top edge of the device. The keyboard features a small arm which acts to reposition its infrared eye and to act as a support for the T5, which needs to rest upon that arm to receive signals. The problem is that this was none to stable an arrangement, and any jostling or movement of the device resulted in missed keystrokes.

This was particularly annoying when trying to use the keyboard in a mobile environment - on the train or in a car. But it could happen even when sitting at a desk if I forgot myself and started hitting the keys too forcefully.

I think that this device is best suited to a stationary environment where a lot of data entry is required. For day to day use, it just got to be too much of a pain. My friends were right - it was easier to learn Graffiti.