Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Yeah, But Can it Improve my Lousy Typing? Spb Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 Reviewed
Posted by Perry Reed in "SOFTWARE" @ 01:00 PM
Tired of hunting and pecking on the tiny built-in keyboard input method? Wish that big Pocket PC screen could be better used for inputting your text? Spb Software House may have the answer for you. Their Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 input method uses the full Pocket PC screen (in landscape mode) to turn your device into a large thumb keyboard.
Back in high school I had several opportunities to take a typing class, however I always managed to get out of it and congratulated myself for doing so. But in an irony worthy of Alanis, I now have a job where I type most of the day. These days, with the proliferation of thumb keyboards on all sorts of devices, I wonder if they should be teaching that in high school.
The Spb Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 is the latest thumb keyboard, but it has a twist. Instead of a hardware add-on, it uses your Pocket PC's screen to turn your entire Pocket PC into a large "virtual" thumb keyboard. This makes entering text faster and easier than the built-in input methods. But accuracy is another issue.
Installation
Installation is a snap. Just dock your Pocket PC and run the setup program on your PC. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Then once it's installed, select the full screen keyboard as your input method. It should be installed into main RAM, not onto a storage card.
Using the keyboard
Since I have a Jornada 568, the first thing I noticed was that the cover very much got in the way, so I removed it. Once that was done, using the keyboard was much easier. When you first bring it up, it displays your standard input method but with a little keyboard icon at the top left corner.
Figure 1: The new icon appears on the default input method.
Tapping that icon brings up the full screen keyboard in landscape mode:
Figure 2: The full screen keyboard
You can set which default input method to use, or use none to have the full screen keyboard display automatically. This feature, new to version 2.0, is quite powerful when you think about it! The full size keyboard may be overkill for light editing, but it would be a bit of a hassle to constantly have to choose your input method or reset your default method depending on what you're doing. This lets you have a standard method for basic tasks, yet stil have the full screen keyboard as a secondary input method for larger writing needs.
I admit that I've never been much of a thumb-typist. I have the HP thumb keyboard for my Jornada, but rarely use it because I'm so slow and inaccurate with it. Sadly, I'm not a whole lot better with this keyboard, although I did improve fairly quickly with practice.
Figure 3: The results of my first typing attempt.
Actually, I found the full screen keyboard to be a bit easier than the HP hardware, possibly because its virtual keys are larger than the hardware keys. Still, it's not going to replace my Targus Stowaway keyboard for long documents, but for medium length tasks, I think it's a keeper.
As you type, you can see what you're inputting in a small window at the top of the screen. Like the regular keyboard, word-completion is active saving you a few thumbstrokes on common words. All of the usual key modifiers are there, like Shift, Control and Caps. And the first two of which are sticky, so you can simply press them and then the character that you wish to modify. This is much nicer than trying to press two keys at once! You also get a Fn key which provides access to punctuation and several special characters which are conveniently overlayed on the letters.
A backspace key lets you back up to correct mistakes and left and right cursor keys allow you to move the cursor along your text. One word of warning! You cannot press the cursor keys multiple times quickly to advance or retreat the cursor along your text; instead you must press and hold it. The reason is that a double-tap of the cursor keys is interpreted as a "home" or "end" command and will move the cursor directly to the beginning or the end of your text.
When you're done thumbing in your text, simply close the keyboard by pressing the icon and your new text is pasted into your document.
Options
Figure 4: The options screen
The options screen provides several settings, most of which I recommend, but one of which I do not. Firstly, you can select from several skins that are available for the keyboard on the Spb Web site. All of them look nice, though I'm partial to the default no-nonsense skin. If you have a connected device, you can select Download Skins from the Tools menu, and download new skins over the air. Cool! You can select your default input method, as I mentioned above. Again, select "none" to have the full screen keyboard appear immediately upon opening the input method.
Figure 5: Some of the new skins available
The next option is the one I do not recommend. It allows you to close the full screen keyboard and paste your text simply by hitting enter rather than closing the keyboard manually. With my lousy thumb typing I found myself hitting enter accidentally quite often and it was a real hassle when hitting it closed the keyboard and pasted my text into the document. I'd rather be able to correct my typos (of which there are generally a lot) first and then manually close the keyboard.
The next setting will cause the keyboard to take any text you had selected in your document when you opened the keyboard and put it into the keyboard's buffer for you to edit. Very handy!
The final group of options are perhaps the best. Much like Caligrapher and other input methods, the full screen keyboard accepts a few gestures to perform different tasks. For example, to input an upper-case letter, it is not actually necessary to press Shift first. Instead, you can press the letter you want and then slide your thumb up to make it upper-case. Moving your thumb down enters a linebreak (paragraph) and moving it left or right enters a backspace or space, respectively.
Gotchas
Not many! For Jornada users, the hard cover definitely gets in the way. Also, I don't recommend setting the Enter key to automatically close the keyboard. And I'm not sure I'm wild about the double-tap settings on the cursor keys. But those really are minor quibbles. The biggest problem I had was not with the keyboard, but with the typist. I'm still a lousy thumb typist and it showed. My accuracy using the full screen keyboard was horrendous, though I found that by slowing down I could improve it substantially. I'm sure with practice, I could get better still, just as over the years I've taught myself to type on a regular keyboard, learning the hard way what I should have learned in class years ago.
Where to Buy
Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 is available from PocketGear for $9.95 [Affiliate]. Previously registered users looking to upgrade can do so for 50% off the retail price.
Conclusion
Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 is a solid tool and I intend to keep it as my secondary input method (which the tools options allow me to do quite nicely). It also got several looks and questions from coworkers as I tried it out in the office. For long documents, I will still use my Stowaway Keyboard, but the full screen keyboard will come in very handy when I don't have a flat surface for the Stowaway or when I just don't feel the need to pull it out and set it up.
Back in high school I had several opportunities to take a typing class, however I always managed to get out of it and congratulated myself for doing so. But in an irony worthy of Alanis, I now have a job where I type most of the day. These days, with the proliferation of thumb keyboards on all sorts of devices, I wonder if they should be teaching that in high school.
The Spb Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 is the latest thumb keyboard, but it has a twist. Instead of a hardware add-on, it uses your Pocket PC's screen to turn your entire Pocket PC into a large "virtual" thumb keyboard. This makes entering text faster and easier than the built-in input methods. But accuracy is another issue.
Installation
Installation is a snap. Just dock your Pocket PC and run the setup program on your PC. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Then once it's installed, select the full screen keyboard as your input method. It should be installed into main RAM, not onto a storage card.
Using the keyboard
Since I have a Jornada 568, the first thing I noticed was that the cover very much got in the way, so I removed it. Once that was done, using the keyboard was much easier. When you first bring it up, it displays your standard input method but with a little keyboard icon at the top left corner.
Figure 1: The new icon appears on the default input method.
Tapping that icon brings up the full screen keyboard in landscape mode:
Figure 2: The full screen keyboard
You can set which default input method to use, or use none to have the full screen keyboard display automatically. This feature, new to version 2.0, is quite powerful when you think about it! The full size keyboard may be overkill for light editing, but it would be a bit of a hassle to constantly have to choose your input method or reset your default method depending on what you're doing. This lets you have a standard method for basic tasks, yet stil have the full screen keyboard as a secondary input method for larger writing needs.
I admit that I've never been much of a thumb-typist. I have the HP thumb keyboard for my Jornada, but rarely use it because I'm so slow and inaccurate with it. Sadly, I'm not a whole lot better with this keyboard, although I did improve fairly quickly with practice.
Figure 3: The results of my first typing attempt.
Actually, I found the full screen keyboard to be a bit easier than the HP hardware, possibly because its virtual keys are larger than the hardware keys. Still, it's not going to replace my Targus Stowaway keyboard for long documents, but for medium length tasks, I think it's a keeper.
As you type, you can see what you're inputting in a small window at the top of the screen. Like the regular keyboard, word-completion is active saving you a few thumbstrokes on common words. All of the usual key modifiers are there, like Shift, Control and Caps. And the first two of which are sticky, so you can simply press them and then the character that you wish to modify. This is much nicer than trying to press two keys at once! You also get a Fn key which provides access to punctuation and several special characters which are conveniently overlayed on the letters.
A backspace key lets you back up to correct mistakes and left and right cursor keys allow you to move the cursor along your text. One word of warning! You cannot press the cursor keys multiple times quickly to advance or retreat the cursor along your text; instead you must press and hold it. The reason is that a double-tap of the cursor keys is interpreted as a "home" or "end" command and will move the cursor directly to the beginning or the end of your text.
When you're done thumbing in your text, simply close the keyboard by pressing the icon and your new text is pasted into your document.
Options
Figure 4: The options screen
The options screen provides several settings, most of which I recommend, but one of which I do not. Firstly, you can select from several skins that are available for the keyboard on the Spb Web site. All of them look nice, though I'm partial to the default no-nonsense skin. If you have a connected device, you can select Download Skins from the Tools menu, and download new skins over the air. Cool! You can select your default input method, as I mentioned above. Again, select "none" to have the full screen keyboard appear immediately upon opening the input method.
Figure 5: Some of the new skins available
The next option is the one I do not recommend. It allows you to close the full screen keyboard and paste your text simply by hitting enter rather than closing the keyboard manually. With my lousy thumb typing I found myself hitting enter accidentally quite often and it was a real hassle when hitting it closed the keyboard and pasted my text into the document. I'd rather be able to correct my typos (of which there are generally a lot) first and then manually close the keyboard.
The next setting will cause the keyboard to take any text you had selected in your document when you opened the keyboard and put it into the keyboard's buffer for you to edit. Very handy!
The final group of options are perhaps the best. Much like Caligrapher and other input methods, the full screen keyboard accepts a few gestures to perform different tasks. For example, to input an upper-case letter, it is not actually necessary to press Shift first. Instead, you can press the letter you want and then slide your thumb up to make it upper-case. Moving your thumb down enters a linebreak (paragraph) and moving it left or right enters a backspace or space, respectively.
Gotchas
Not many! For Jornada users, the hard cover definitely gets in the way. Also, I don't recommend setting the Enter key to automatically close the keyboard. And I'm not sure I'm wild about the double-tap settings on the cursor keys. But those really are minor quibbles. The biggest problem I had was not with the keyboard, but with the typist. I'm still a lousy thumb typist and it showed. My accuracy using the full screen keyboard was horrendous, though I found that by slowing down I could improve it substantially. I'm sure with practice, I could get better still, just as over the years I've taught myself to type on a regular keyboard, learning the hard way what I should have learned in class years ago.
Where to Buy
Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 is available from PocketGear for $9.95 [Affiliate]. Previously registered users looking to upgrade can do so for 50% off the retail price.
Conclusion
Full Screen Keyboard 2.0 is a solid tool and I intend to keep it as my secondary input method (which the tools options allow me to do quite nicely). It also got several looks and questions from coworkers as I tried it out in the office. For long documents, I will still use my Stowaway Keyboard, but the full screen keyboard will come in very handy when I don't have a flat surface for the Stowaway or when I just don't feel the need to pull it out and set it up.
