Data Entry
Keyboard
Most Palm OS devices can be attached to an add-on keyboard. These keyboards are available from Palm OS device manufacturers, and from other companies manufacturing add-ons for handheld computers.
Keyboards have great advantage of speed. Most persons who know how to keyboard can enter text by keyboard much faster than they can write; even a skilled Graffiti user cannot approach the speed of a skilled keyboard user.
Keyboards also have several disadvantages. Much of the intuitiveness of the Palm OS experience comes from the ability to point to what you mean: you tap on a button, you tap where you want the text insertion point to go, you tap on a word to select it. Although keyboards provide alternate ways of doing these things, the ways are less intuitive. There may be several obscure keystrokes involved in specifying a tap on a screen button, for example.
A keyboard also requires a table or other flat surface. It does little good in the subway or while riding as a passenger in a car.
Finally, a keyboard is another piece of stuff to carry. Even keyboards that fold up as small as your Palm OS device—and these have surprisingly good “feel”—are another thing to be mislaid.
Keyboards for Palm OS devices tend not to consume very much battery power compared to not using the keyboard. While the keyboard is powered from the Palm OS device, the keyboard uses power only while a key is actually pressed. Entering text with Graffiti uses power, as well: the Palm OS device must track the stylus as it forms the Graffiti symbol, and then compute the character intended.
Some Palm OS device users swear by keyboards. Others find them frippery. If entering large amounts of text while at a flat surface describes a substantial portion of your Palm OS device use, you may find a keyboard to be highly valuable.
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Copyright © 2002 Brian Hetrick
Page last updated 15 July 2003.
