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Karel Jansens's Avatar
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#13
Originally Posted by bexley View Post
You guys are making me think of trading my N810 with an N800 owner who wants to upgrade. I'll have it in my hands tomorrow when I visit my sister in NY and will post my reaction.

GPS was one of the main attractions for me, and so was the keyboard, but now I hear many complaints about the GPS. And I've not heard many complaints from N800 users about how they wish they had an easier way to type.

Is this just because you're all used to keeping text input to a minimum, or because you find the touchscreen adequate for writing emails and chatting (when you can't use a BT keyboard)? Maybe a bit of both?

For me, a tablet needs to be almost as easy as paper for note-taking in order for it to earn a spot in my pocket. Quick text input via the touchscreen seems clumsy, probably impossibly so when walking or on a bumpy train, and takes almost all of your visual attention while it would seem that a hardware keyboard would let you type while reading or looking at something else (essentially: note-taking) or maybe even walking. I've never used a touchscreen to type though, so inform me if I'm exagerating its inferiority to a hardware keyboard. I know that the N810's keyboard isn't perfect, but tactile things are generally much easier to adapt to and get better with than writing on a touchscreen, which takes mostly hand-eye coordination. That said, is handwriting-recognition or the software thumb keyboard the preferred way to type for most people with the N800? How fast are people on the software KB?

I'll be getting a BT keyboard too for the N810, but I think that I'd be carrying it with me all the time if I had the N800, whereas I'll only take it on overseas trips with the N810. I could only assume in this case, since I didn't have the option of holding an N810 in my hands before ordering it. Well, I did, but then I'd have to wait at least a month...not possible.
I have a few gadgets with thumbboards, so I feel quite confident in stating that the N800's virtual thumbboard isn't inherently more difficult to use than any of the "real" ones I've tapped upon (Pepper Pad, Psions, SE P910i, Treo). That's not to say that I find any of them specifically easy to use but for quick, limited text input in the absense of decent HWR (see below), they're "good enough".

For quick, lengthy text input, nothing really beats a real keyboard. I have two BT keyboards, the ubiquitous StowAway/iRiver (which is very nice, but has no separate number keys) and an older, non-HID "Smart Keyboard" (which does have separate number keys, but has smaller keys, is harder to be made to work with the Itablets and can realistically only be used on a rigid horizontal surface). I can type away all day long on both of them without any hassle (well, not all day obviously, as BT connections suck gogo-juice and make your Itablet stop).

OTOH, I have on occasion given my opinion about good handwriting recognition, which IMHO only exists on the Newton platform and -- as a less userfriendly subset -- as the Windows-only program CalliGrapher/PenOffice. It is my opinion and experience that for creative, immersed writing nothing really beats writing by hand: The eye-hand coordination is perfect, the involvement of the writer with his text is a lot better and it is AFAIK the only text input method where the writer can see both his hand and the text written. It may not be as quick as a keyboard, but at the end of the day I seem to have more left on the screen written than typed. Also, I seem to have developed a weird sort of keyboard dyslexia where I often mangle letters typed. This disorder does not occur when I write.

But, as always, YMMV and more of that jazz...