Once upon a time, people made money selling "desktop replacements" (which turned out to be laptops with massive CPUs, no battery life, and a price tag appropriate for anything with a name that implied "major advance").

A couple months ago, I got my hands on my first keyboard designed for use with my Palm IIIx. I have now had to ask myself: Is this the day of the first "laptop replacements"?

For two weeks I tested the Palm Portable Keyboard and the Landware GoType Keyboard in every situation that I, as a law student, typically find myself: studying on a plane, taking class notes, hanging out on the beach, et cetera. After two weeks, two keyboards that had seemed to differ only in that one folds up and one doesn't took on very different personalities. I'd like to be able to tell you the better one, but the simple truth is, desktop keyboards these ain't. Happy Palm keyboarding depends on everything from your Palm to your hands to your ego.

In this review, I'll look at things like convenience, usability, stability, and price. In addition, I'll try to give you a sense of what this hardware was like in real life--the use and abuse of law school. With all that in mind, I'll leave you with that immortal question for all true gadget geeks: Am I paying good money just for something small, black, and cool, or have I found one of those Holy Grails of geekdom: Something Practical, Too.

Before I even looked at the keyboards, I noticed one significant distinction between the two keyboards: price. At the time of this writing, I couldn't find the Palm Portable Keyboard for less than $99; however, the Landware keyboard turned up at a retailer for about $50. To the average law student, that kind of difference could render moot the rest of this review; however, for those who just got their loan checks, I'll go on.

The Palm Portable Keyboard starts in your hand as a black case a hair bigger than a Palm IIIx with the flip cover on. You pull a switch on the end and the case opens like a book, unfolding into four sections. When it's fully open and lying flat, you slide the four sections together, and suddenly, you have a full-size laptop keyboard in front of you. A small wire stand unfolds out of the top for you to plug your Palm into.

	GoType Keyboard

The Landware GoType Keyboard comes in a solid case about three-quarters the length of the unfolded Palm Keyboard. A semi-transparent black clamshell cover over the keys opens to reveal a keyboard with three-quarter-sized keys and an honest-to-gosh Palm cradle built into the top. Six programmable keys line the top of the keyboard. Before you even install the drivers for either keyboard, some things are already obvious.

Key size and layout are unique to each keyboard. The Palm Keyboard looks and feels very much like a large laptop keyboard, with four additional Palm keys on the right side that perform similar functions to the hard keys on your Palm. Landware made their keys smaller, gave them a slightly deeper stroke, and lined the arrow keys along the bottom rather than in the pyramid shape of the Palm Keyboard and most desktop keyboards. If you have big fingers, the Landware keys may pose a problem. My medium-sized fingers handled the Landware configuration pretty easily after a few minutes practice (although the mental transition between full keyboards and the Landware keyboard caused some bumbling every time). In class, I was able to easily keep up with the professor on either keyboard, although I found the size of the Palm keyboard to give it a slight edge in comfort. Another quirk in the Landware keyboard is the obvious Mac tendencies of the designers--the Backspace key is labeled "Del" and the Ctrl key is now "Command". The designers claim that they put "Del" because it fit better on the key than "Backspace", but I have a funny feeling I know where they stand on the Microsoft breakup.

In addition, the angle at which the Palm sits proved to be an issue sometimes. Neither keyboard allowed me to adjust the angle at which the PDA rested, so if I sat at a very low desk or table, I had to lean back some to get the angle I was used to. In real life, the only location where I had this problem was in a coach-class seat on an airliner. The LandWare keyboard is the steeper-angled of the two.

An immediate concern I had about Palm keyboards was durability. The LandWare keyboard feels like it's built like a rock, though it's not much heavier than the Palm keyboard. After nearly a month in briefcases and backpacks, not to mention being typed on constantly for two weeks, the keyboard doesn't show a sign of use. However, the Palm Keyboard has a distinctly flimsy feel, right from the hard plastic of the outer case, to the crackling of metal and plastic when you unfold the unit, the floppiness of the unfolded keyboard when you pick it up, and the thin wire stand holding the Palm. I have more complaints about that stand later, but suffice it to say here, I doubt a hostile exchange with gravity--either the Palm Keyboard falling or something falling on the keyboard--would end a fraction as well for the Palm unit as for the LandWare. After two weeks of use, there are distinct scratch marks on the Palm unit where the keyboard slides open and shut, as well.

The LandWare keyboard's unique ability to function as a HotSync cradle (and as a battery charger, if you buy the Palm V version) deserves mention, particularly if you travel as much as I do. I appreciated not having to pack a cradle to HotSync with my laptop while away from home. (I've already ruined one cradle while traveling.) Saving on the cost of a separate HotSync cable adds to value of the LandWare unit.

Finally, the all-important Geek Factor. After two weeks on the road and in the classroom, I've been able to thoroughly evaluate popular response to either unit, and people seem to be pretty impressed by the Palm Keyboard. Yes, the LandWare keyboard does have this "Don't bother me I'm downloading something from my satellite"-look but the Palm's "Laptop out of the nothingness" magic is about the coolest thing since, well, the Palm Pilot.

So now we install the drivers and turn the Palm on.

	Palm Portable Keyboard

Both keyboards allow you to customize keyboard shortcuts. The LandWare keyboard also allows you to program its six green keys to perform up to 18 different functions, from starting programs to Hotsyncing. (However, I never did get the Initiate HotSync command to work, mostly due to the fact that you have to flick a switch to turn the keyboard into a cradle within five seconds of initiating HotSync, and I always seemed to gum it up. Every time I wanted to HotSync using the LandWare cradle I ended up having to use the Palm's on-screen HotSync button.) The Palm Keyboard gives you a host of programmable key combinations to launch applications, rather than programmable keys. The Palm Keyboard also provides a long list of commands for navigating documents and fields, which made for a steep learning curve but some added control. In real life, I suppose I could have learned key combinations over time, but I found those nice green programmable hard keys on the LandWare keyboard very addicting. When I was in a real hurry to enter something or move information between applications, and I had both keyboards with me, I usually pulled out the LandWare keyboard.

If you are planning on doing any document editing or creation, you should get a good word-processing document handler (see my previous comparative review of several such applications on this website). My LandWare GoType keyboard unit came with TakeNote and WordSleuth, a better-than-average word processor and a thesaurus, respectively. This also significantly raised the LandWare value.

Another concern of mine when first using the keyboards was the effect on battery life. After testing both keyboards in class for a full week, I noticed the following effect: typing for an hour solid on my Palm IIIx lopped 50 percent of the batteries right off the top; however, after a minute of non-use, the batteries came back up to close to where they had originally been. (I've noticed the same effect with Dreadling!) This made actual battery drain hard to track. If I had to make a gut judgment based on my last two weeks, I'd say the Palm Keyboard drained the batteries faster, and the batteries came back up less with the Palm Keyboard than with the LandWare keyboard. LandWare does make some claims as to a special design that uses less battery power, but I wasn't able to fully test that.

Finally, each keyboard had one major quirk that really bugged me.

The LandWare keyboard seemed to have a problem with back-logging repeated key commands; i.e., when holding down the Backspace ("Del"!) button to delete a line of text, my Palm would often continue deleting well after I released the button. As you can imagine, when taking notes in class, this can be a really aggravating experience. However, this effect was only noticeable when working with major documents; I never had a problem when just entering information in DateBook or something. The LandWare drivers do allow you to tweak key repeat and delay, but I was unable to fine-tune this quirk away without slowing the repeat down to a level I thought was unacceptable.

The Palm Keyboard's major sin was crashing. Most of the time, I simply lost the use of the keyboard and had to do a warm reset to get the keyboard working again. Less often, I got an actual error message that forced me to do a warm reset. These crashes seem to occur only when the Palm was shifted on its small wire stand and the serial port jarred a little. But the wire stand does nothing to brace the Palm, and the vast majority of times that the Palm was jarred, it was because I was pressing a button on my Palm, or doing something else unavoidable. After a two weeks of class, I had accumulated about a dozen crashes. I noticed that the Palm Keyboard always seems to be communicating with the Palm; for example, all you have to do is set the Palm in the stand or press a key and the keyboard wakes your Palm up. However, this constant signal also means that even when my Palm was OFF I could jar it and lock the keyboard up. In fact, many of my crashes occurred when I was simply pressing my Palm's green power button or hard keys to begin using it. (Of course, I could have avoided that problem by using the hard keys on the keyboard itself, but habits die hard.)

In the last two weeks, I took two classes' worth of notes, edited my Law Review comment, and entered 120 DateBook entries for a Law Review write-on competition. I tried carrying the keyboards with me in my briefcase and in my pocket. I customized the shortcuts and keys, and I used the keyboards both when in a hurry to get something done and when just tinkering. In the end, I would say that we don't quite have laptop replacements yet, but for only one, single reason: screen size. When typing notes, I never did quite get used to seeing one paragraph at a time. But the keyboard end is pretty well tied down. Both keyboards have their unique features and quirks, but in the end, what you have is two different but excellent options--choice rather than risk. If you've got big hands or you don't always have your briefcase or pocketbook with you, the Palm Portable Keyboard is a practical, portable, cool addition to your hi-tech arsenal; if you want durability, stability, and good value for your mini-processing dollar, go with LandWare.

Feel free to contact me with questions and comments at tcinkel@pepperdine.edu.

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