While each new handheld I get receives fills me with "gadget passion" they also do a very good job of emptying my pocketbook. It isn't just the devices themselves, but the accessories that go with them: cases, travel chargers, and of course keyboards. I'm pretty good with Graffiti, but as someone who is required to take meeting notes for hours at a time, a keyboard is an absolute must. But each handheld device, be it a Palm OS handheld or a Pocket PC, has an entirely new connector. What's a goddess to do?  

Buy the Pocketop Wireless keyboard, of course! This device solves quite a few of my gadget problems by using infrared to connect to handheld devices. It works with iPAQs, Jornadas, Palms, HandSprings, Clies, you name it-- except for Toshiba Pocket PCs, though I hear that a new driver for that series may be coming soon. The idea is really quite revolutionary. Instead of actually plugging your handheld into a connector on a traditional keyboard, such as the Targus Stowaway, the Pocketop communicates by "beaming" the letters to your handheld as you type them. All you need is to install the software driver that comes with the keyboard.  

The keyboard itself is a tiny little marvel, measuring (when folded) four and a half inches long, three inches wide, and half an inch tall, which is roughly the size of an m5XX series Palm handheld. When open, the keyboard is just slightly over nine inches long, three inches wide, and just over a quarter inch tall. That is significantly smaller than the Targus Stowaway, and the main reason for that is the fact that there is not a dedicated row of keys for numbers, and both the top and the bottom of the three rows of letter keys are much narrower than they normally would be. While that may make you think that this keyboard would be very hard to touch type on, that simply isn't the case. The keys are slanted in such a way that your fingers will tend to "feel" that the keys are larger than they actually are. In my own typing tests, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I could type, with very few errors.

What's a bit tricker is actually inputting numbers and punctuation, since they are accesed only by using special function keys on the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard. That took a bit more getting used to, but after a bit of practice I found that the system was quite natural. The Numlock key made number-crunching with a spreadsheet much easier, and there's a Capslock key too. In the upper right-hand corner there are keys that allow you to access the datebook, address, memo, and to do aplications, and the driver does allow you to program key combinations to launch other programs.  

The other tricky bit is actually setting up your handheld device to work with the Pocketop keyboard. If you have an m5XX series Palm handheld, you're in the best possible position. Just prop your Palm up on the included folding stand, and you're ready to go. The stand also includes a rail that allows you to attach it to your Palm, serving as both a rudimentary sort of screen protection/case and a convenient method of carrying the stand when it's not in use. You can also use the stand with other handhelds, such as the Jornada or the iPaq, but it does require a bit more adjustment to get the IR beam lined up properly with the reflector on the stand and the keyboard.

And if you have a Clie, things get a bit messier. The software driver works just fine on your device, but it won't allow you to invert the screen so that you can simply lay your Clie on a table with the IR port facing the keyboard (a 180 degree rotation from how you would normally view the screen). That means that you have to use the stand with your device, unless you're comfortable enough with your typing skills to type away without being able to read what you've entered. But what do you do if you have a Clie NR70, like me? Can't use it with the stand, because the device itself is too tall and it's almost impossible to get the IR beam lined up correctly. But if you place the NR70 on the table in open mode, turn it around so the IR port faces the keyboard, and then twist the screen about halfway around, but not enough to activate Sony's automatic screen rotation utility, it works perfectly. The picture should give you a good idea of how to set it up.  

I've talked an awful lot about exactly how to get the Pocketop IR Keyboard working with your handheld, and not very much about how it actually works. I was quite impressed with its functionality in my tests with both the Sony Clie NR70 and the Palm m505. I'm a pretty fast typist, and I had no problems at all with the keyboard not being able to keep up with me. And contrary to some reports I've heard, it works perfectly with WordSmith on Palm OS devices, though one thing to note is that the keyboard shortcuts such as copy and paste will not work with the Pocketop. It's also important to note that the keyboard is powered by a single AAA battery and doesn't draw any power directly from your handheld device, though of course using infrared to communicate with the keyboard will draw some power from your device.

Is the Pocketop Wireless Keyboard worth it? Depending on the kind of device you have, absolutely! The driver isn't quite up to my expectations as far as the Sony Clie is concerned, but I can understand that it's difficult to develop when you consider that Sony's screen programming is definitely non-standard. If you have a Palm or HandSpring device, the software works flawlessly, and you can either use the included stand or use the software to rotate the device's screen if you lay it on a table. And of course if you have both Pocket PCs and Palm OS devices, this is the only keyboard on the market that you can use with any device. And that's the reason, in large part, why I recommend this accessory so highly, even though it's apparent that the driver still needs some work. There's a great deal of appeal in being able to enter text into almost any handheld device via infrared touch typing, no bulky cable or incompatible connectors to worry about. And no worries about having to buy a new keyboard simply because you bought a new device. That's the way handheld computing is supposed to work--making our lives simpler and better organized, not more complicated.