News

Drumming your fingers on the tablecloth- typing?

It looks and feels like a soft fabric bag for your Palm PC. But it's actually a combined bag and keyboard, using new "electrosensing" fabric.

Most keyboards for pocket computers are large, heavy, and clanky - and not terribly good, sometimes, either. But as any user of a hand-held appliance will know, the pocket devices are really not good for making more than just brief notes.

Either you have to learn to scribble the way they like, or else you have to hunt tiny keys with a stylus or the tips of your thumbs.

Users of the Palm Pilot, however, now have a soft option; a fabric keyboard.

The keyboard technology was developed by UK startup, ElekSen in Pinewood; but the product has been developed and launched by Logitech of Switzerland.

"This is a unique product," said Denis Pavillard, director of product marketing at Logitech. "The strong water-resistant textile case provides protection for the PDA when traveling. Then the case opens to be a fabric keyboard that is designed to help you get the most out of your PDA."

KeyCase "frees users from stylus operation with an on-screen button and dedicated function keys for frequently used Palm functions," said the company. "There's no mouse, but a pressure-sensitive scroller handles navigation of menus and long documents."

The Logitech KeyCase keyboard is compatible with Palm OS 4.1 and Palm OS 4.0 for the Palm m125, Palm m500, Palm m505, Palm i705 and future handhelds with the Palm Universal Connector. You connect the keyboard - more of a table-cloth, really! - and prop the PDA up with the "SmartMotion" cradle which connects them.

Then you start drumming on the table with your fingers.

Opinions differ as to how big an improvement this is going to be.

Those who remember the early days of truly portable computing which started with Sir Clive Sinclair's rubber-tipped laptops a decade or more ago, will recall that it takes some adjustment of your typing action before you really get used to pressing "keys" which don't move.

However, those who adjusted to the fact that they just sit there, found that they could develop quite a turn of typing speed by drumming on the table as if waiting for a menu.

The Wall Street Journal reporter, David Pringle, estimated you might get 45 words per minute, which is not going to break any secretarial records. Indeed, Palm has always claimed that with practice, users of its Graffiti handwriting system can reach 30 words a minute with abbreviated gestures written on the Pilot screen - possibly an optimistic claim, but not badly wrong.

However, the big advantage of the KeyCase is that it isn't just a keyboard. It's also a wrap-around case for the Palm. Add-on keyboards for Palm exist; they aren't cheap, they aren't small, and they aren't soft. This case is fabric, and doubles as a keyboard - at the price, it should be very popular, even if Pringle described it as "wacky" in his report.

The Logitech software, to configure the Palm for the keyboard, is compatible with the following most modern versions of Windows. The application is also compatible with Macintosh OS. The keyboard ships with a free trial version of the popular Palm OS based word processor, WordSmith.

ElekSen is a switching and sensing company that develops and licences soft interfacing means. "Financially backed by 3i Group, ElekSen is a combination of expertise in electronics, software, fabric structures and production engineering." ElekTex is the first technology release from ElekSen and has been developed to enable creation of a new generation of consumer products with soft, flexible and lightweight interfaces. It combines conductive fabric structures with microchip technology.

North Americacontact is - Nathan Papadopulos while in Europe contact Garreth Hayes