PalmOS keyboards exist in three technologies: Bluetooth, Infrared and Cable. Each of these families is further subdivided into 5row and 4row keyboards. Belkin sent us their 5-row infrared PDA keyboard!
The product ships in a huge box:
All you find in the box is a rather small blister. Taking the keyboard out of it is a mayor pain in the hide, it took me like two minutes and ended in the complete destruction of the blister. The blister also contains a ‘quick reference’ and a driver cd:
The keyboard itself is very small. These pictures show it next to a Tungsten E2 and a Tungsten T3:
It flips open if you press the button on the side:
Power is supplied via a single AAA battery that hides in a small compartment on the keyboard. As always, I reccommend AccuPower products because they offer the highest capacities!
The IR signal is transferred to the handheld with a little “mirror stand”. You need to adjust the ,mirror so that the IR signal hits the transmitter of your handheld-and this is by no means an easy venture.
When the keyboard is not in use, you can dock the mirror stand onto it. Please keep in mind that you can only dock it like shown below-any other way of docking works, but leads to huge scratches!
The “activation” is handled by a tiny button next to the IR transmitter. It gets pressed automatically when you close the keyboard and powers it off!
The keyboard does not exist in any layout but the US qwerty one. The keys are differently sized, it takes a bit of time to get used to them. Pressing them produces a pretty loud clack, the t and space keys are especially bad. The layout is funky, there are special keys for brightness, common buttons, powering off the handheld, adjusting brightness, acessing apps,…
A stylus silo is located at the right side of the keyboard. This can come in handy, altough it probably is too small to hold something like an OmniPen Pro.
The keyboard was tested on a Palm Tungsten T3, a Tungsten E2 and a Palm IIIc-and (I had no problems entering stuff on any of them!
The keyboard driver needs 75k of RAM. It works very reliably, but needs to be reenabled after each and every softreset. Here are a few screnshots(thwe prefs don’t work on my T3, and I cant enter shortcuts). Beaming is disabled when the driver is on btw:
The facepad can be opened by pressing the smiley key. It allows you to enter accented characters easily.
Overall, this keyboard is cool! The IR optics and the PDA stand take a bit of time to get used to, but once one figures out how to set them up, they are a non-issue! The keys are a bit small, but after an hour of training, you will adjust yourself to it! If you want a light keyboard that works reliably and doesnt cost much, this is the way to go!(This review was typed on it)
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Does anyone know of a good (smallish) BT keyboard?
Thomas, my cousin uses a bluetooth keyboard from Think Outside; i think it’s very slick and has decent functionality. Some owners, however, have contended the price to be rather hefty, at the price tag of $100. The belkin reviewed here is only a fraction of that price but some say it’s rather flimsy in design.
BTW, admin, why do you have so many PDAs? Just a silly question; I need a palm tx to replace my Z22.
Hi Brian,
actually, the mechanics aare ok once you get accustomed to them!
The PDA’s, um, they gathered up over time. I can tell you the story another day;).. . I was in the field(as a privateer) long before I started TamsPalm.
Best regards
Tam Hanna
sounds good, is it compatible with a palm tx? i can fid out anywhere, any help would be appricieted!
Hi,
it works on a Tungsten E2..so it should prolly also work on a TX. Cant confirm that though as ofnow – the TX guy is far away from me!
Best regards
Tam Hanna
I’ve just bought one of these for a Palm E2, mainly based on your review.
I’m not impressed in the least. The driver is unstable – often Fn+Done will make the pda crash and need a reset.
The OS 5.0 driver does not print the ‘a’ key!
Other apps seem much more unstable once the driver is installed (Resco Explorer crashed on launch, which I’ve never seen before)
The Palm driver is half-baked and the baker doesn’t seem to care – the ‘latest’ version is 3 years old.
Other than that it’s really very nice indeed.
Hi Neil,
I just forwarded your comment to my contact at Belkin.
I will see how she reacts!
Best regards
Tam Hanna
P.s. I am sorry for the bad experience you have had. But I had no problems with it on a T5, a T3 and even a WristPDA… . Are you sure that no third party app causes the problem?
Hi, I have the same problem, I got mine quite a while ago, but it’s quite unstable on my TE. It’s been sitting in a drawer for a long time now.
Agreed, the belkin driver is crap. Look internally and you’ll really be depressed with the quality of their dev team.
I cleaned it up and converted it to dvorak layout. If anyone wants an improved version (though not any more stable) you can get it here:
http://spacebit.dyndns.org/Comp/PalmBelkinKeyboard