By Claire Pieterek
Are you suffering from a case of Treo envy but just can't persuade the powers that be that you absolutely need to replace your Palm handheld and your cell phone? If you have a Handspring Visor or Palm m500 series device, you're partially in luck. You can get TT-Tec's nifty SnapNType Keyboard, distributed by RipTide Enterprises. You'll at least look half the part, and you'll have a handy way to enter text quickly into your handheld to boot.
The SnapNType keyboard is pictured in Figure A.
FIGURE A
The SnapNType keyboard is a compact unit that snaps directly onto your handheld's HotSync port. (click for larger image)
The SnapNType snaps onto your handheld's HotSync port, and it covers the Graffiti/silkscreen area, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
The SnapNType covers the Graffiti/silkscreen area. (click for larger image)
To use it, you type with your thumbs, just as you would with a Treo or Blackberry device. The four application buttons are also covered, but TT-Tec has provided for this functionality on the SnapNType itself.
There's also a funky little thing called the FaceBoard which offers some of the lesser-used symbols, plus a whole flock of emoticons, which is the geek term for those ubiquitous smiley faces found in email, since so many of us can no longer differentiate between humor, irony, sarcasm, and the like. The FaceBoard is pictured in Figure C.
FIGURE C
The SnapNType FaceBoard lets you drop emoticons into your memos, as well as some of those symbols you don't use every day.
I wrote this entire review on the SnapNType (with the exception of the pictures) just to see what it was like. I wanted to know whether I'd really be able to deal with a Palm handheld without Graffiti. Some of my first impressions were of minor device driver issues, such as the always-on Caps Lock arrow, and the need to enable and disable the SnapNType manually. I found these a little annoying, so I contacted TT-Tec and got a new driver, which resolved my issues. The Caps arrow now appears when you shift, instead of always being on. There's now a symbol indicator that appears when you hit the Symbol button. I like that, because when I first started using the SnapNType, I always hit the Symbol button instead of the Shift key. The gripe about enabling and disabling the driver was simply one of laziness. I never had to do that with other keyboards I've used, so why, I reasoned, should I have to do that with this one?
I recommend against leaving the SnapNType on your handheld continuously, as it tends to drain the batteries. You'll have to take the SnapNType off to HotSync anyway, so there you go.
