Portable Keyboads for the Pocket PC

Microsoft re-launched its pen-entry Palm-size PC, beefing up its capabilities and renaming it the "Pocket PC." The idea behind the name is that this new device is so powerful, it is almost like having a PC in your pocket. To help support this idea, Microsoft added a number of new applications to the device, including "Pocket" versions of Word and Excel.

The Pocket PC is much more capable than its predecessor, but when you put applications like Pocket Outlook, Word and Excel on a device, people naturally want to use them fully and completely. The Pocket PC's built-in applications are great for accessing information. You can synchronize the Pocket PC with your desktop PC and use it to check your Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Inbox wherever you are. You can even download Word and Excel documents and view them in Pocket Word and Excel. Accessing data is a breeze, but entering it is a different matter.

Pocket PCs, Palm-size PCs, Palm OS devices and other PDA manufacturers made a compromise. To get these devices small enough to slip easily into your pocket, designers did away with the built-in keyboard, replacing it with pen-entry mechanism such as handwriting recognition and tiny "soft keyboards." Pen-entry methods of entering data are fine for limited amounts of data, like a name and phone number, an appointment, or a short note. But they are inefficient (a.k.a., "tortuous") if you're creating a long document.

If all you use is the Pocket PC's pen-entry capabilities, you're wasting the potential of Pocket Excel and Pocket Word for document creation. To work with text in Pocket Word or Contacts, or to work with numbers in Pocket Excel and MS Money, you should consider a portable, external keyboard. If you travel, and want to use email or the Internet from your hotel room, a portable keyboard is almost a must. Check out the reviews below.

[Note: Two external keyboards were not included in this review. Landware (www.landware.com/catalog/ce/index.html) will release a version of its popular GoType! Pro keyboard for the Cassiopeia models E-100, E-105 or E-115. GoType was not ready in time to include it in this review, but may be available by the time you read this. In addition, Genovation (www.genovation.com) makes the Travelboard model 634, an external keyboard compatible with the earlier Palm-size PCs. They have not indicated that they will upgrade the product for the Pocket PC.]

The iBIZ KeySync Portable Keyboard