Palm PDA Keyboard
=================

Yesterday I wrote  some texts on an external keyboard  for my Palm III.
It should  be a good  idea to write texts  on a real  hardware keyboard
because pen  writing is slower  and should be  more prone to  errors (I
have sometimes  problem to understand my  written text so the  poor old
Palm with its m68k CPU must have the same problem...).

So I used the keyboard and  then transferred the text to my workstation
and highlighted  typing errors.  I newer  saw so  much mistypes  when I
wrote texts with pen!

Unfortunately, explanation  is quite obvious: the  keyboard (a Stowaway
foldable  one,  the model  designed  for  Palm III/V/m100  models)  has
several  problems. By  design the  keys  have extremely  low travel  so
tactile feedback is not as good  as on normal keyboard. This particular
keyboards was  heavily used by the  previous owner(s) so for  many keys
there is no feedback at all. And it's a German version so some keys are
swapped ("y" and "z", for example).

I have  tried to  get a  new(er) keyboard  several times.  So I  have a
collection of non-compatible and  non-working (albeit never used) ones.
Thus I  still use this old  one (it actually over-lived  the Palm which
was originally coupled with it - a German model of IBM Workpad).


P.S. I wrote this post on my  SGI O2 with its stock keyboard (the newer
"granite" model with Alps switches). Just to be sure that mistypes will
be minimised. It of course does not improve my English, though...