Chasing the rainbow and looking for love

[austin_dern]

On trying some out, I think I'm falling out of love with the palmtop concept. The ones with miniature keyboards seem right out; the keys are too small. The buttons are easy to press, but I can press only one or two at once. I type fast; my last measured speed was around 105 words per minute, and that's low as I ran out of typing material during the test and had to find the examiner for instructions. I don't type letters; I type words. Anything slower is achingly slow. Plus their miniature keyboards don't have semicolons, insufferably cramping my style.

The ones with freeform writing letters don't fit me either. I write small, newsprint-type small. This is small enough the devices can't make out my letters. Yeah, the cure is to write larger. I have tried for thirty years to write larger, in response to the pains I've given parents, teachers, friends, coworkers, and students. I must at this point conclude I'm not going to ever learn to write bigger.

The freeform draw-and-sketch-out types don't really work either; I tried scribbling a little spectral analysis and found the symbols turned to pixellated gibberish. Yeah, yeah, write larger. Not gonna happen. The stylus is part of the problem; my ideal writing instrument is a fountain pen, delivering precise lines exactly as thick as I want just where I want while gliding frictionlessly over paper. It's the only graceful thing I do, but I do it well. I'll try again, but I'm leaning towards the scanner and reference books.

Trivia: To raise money for his rubber research, Charles Goodyear pawned all his possessions, including his children's schoolbooks. Source: Life Science Library: Giant Molecules, Herman F Mark.

Currently Reading: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981, T A Heppenheimer.

Comments

[orv.livejournal.com]

I was sure I'd hate the little thumb keyboards, but I found they actually weren't bad. I wouldn't want to type any long texts on one, but for writing short notes they're just fine. For me they're marginally faster than PalmOS Graffiti writing. I don't currently own one, though.

I have a regular folding keyboard for my current PalmOS handheld, which is just large enough for me to touch type on. (I have skinny fingers.) The main use I've found for it is answering email while on airplanes. Those tray tables aren't nearly big enough to comfortably use a laptop, but the Palm/keyboard combination has a much smaller footprint. I hotsync the Palm before leaving the office to load it up with mail, then hotsync again by modem after I arrive to send the responses.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I didn't think of the plug-in keyboards. I'm going to have to find one with the plug-in keyboard and see if that works now.

The ridiculous thing is I've got plug-in keyboards for my iBook, too.