Comment The Thumb Board and other input mechanisms (Score 2, Interesting) 142
You may get this PDA just because of the Thumb Board? That's interesting.
I use a Sharp Wizard at the moment, and that has a near full-size keyboard. I'd say I can manage 30wpm on it (it's slightly smaller, and the keys don't have a particularly good feel to them) vs say 60-70 on a regular keyboard.
The Thumb Board would probably get 10wpm if you're lucky. I agree that it's a great thing to have, e.g. asking people to key in their phone numbers / email addresses.
Otherwise, I personally would like faster throughput. I would assume that handwriting recognition would be the primary input mechanism for PDAs like these. What do you think's wrong with that? (This isn't a rhetorical question. You've actually made me curious.)
I believe the Thumb Board isn't in any way designed to be a complete input device, as it were. For starters I would:
- make the delete key at least as big as the space
- add arrow keys
Like you, I really like the concept of the thumb board. It's just raised some questions about what's so wrong with the PDAs that don't have them.
--It's not rocket science, just computer science.
I use a Sharp Wizard at the moment, and that has a near full-size keyboard. I'd say I can manage 30wpm on it (it's slightly smaller, and the keys don't have a particularly good feel to them) vs say 60-70 on a regular keyboard.
The Thumb Board would probably get 10wpm if you're lucky. I agree that it's a great thing to have, e.g. asking people to key in their phone numbers / email addresses.
Otherwise, I personally would like faster throughput. I would assume that handwriting recognition would be the primary input mechanism for PDAs like these. What do you think's wrong with that? (This isn't a rhetorical question. You've actually made me curious.)
I believe the Thumb Board isn't in any way designed to be a complete input device, as it were. For starters I would:
- make the delete key at least as big as the space
- add arrow keys
Like you, I really like the concept of the thumb board. It's just raised some questions about what's so wrong with the PDAs that don't have them.
--It's not rocket science, just computer science.
