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...
