OK....the basics sound good (1. a machine with a hardware keyboard, 2. the same OS as I'm using successfully, 3. the "tap the applications menu entry" implies that kdepimpi was actually installed).

Have you tried running any of the applications from the command line? That's the only way to get meaningful error messages. Try:

/opt/kdepimpi/kopi
/opt/kdepimpi/kapi

You should be able to run those commands under the "user" account (not root).

If you get messages about library files (such as libqt-mt.so.3 or libmicrokdepim.so.1.0) not being found, then double-check the /etc/ld.so.conf file for the "/opt/kdepimpi" entry and re-run ldconfig (as root).