Belkin Wireless Keyboard
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One problem many PDA users face is how to comfortably input more than just addresses or short notes into the device. You can sychronize with your desktop computer, of course, but if you're on the go you're stuck with make-do interfaces which are not nearly as fast and efficient as typing. Bluetooth-enabled portable keyboards can help to solve the problem, but what if your PDA does not have Bluetooth? DMOS examines a wireless keyboard from Belkin that uses IR.
One of the problems with Pocket PCs is how to drive large amounts of information into them quickly when you aren't attached to a host computer. Using the onscreen keyboard with a stylus is inefficient. The "thumb" style keyboards aren't much better. I've gotten pretty quick with the letter recognizer -- to the point I'm that I can use it faster than I can write on paper -- but it takes up a large part of the screen and can cause scratches if you aren't careful.
Recent Pocket PCs have added USB host capabilities, but often those normal keyboards are large, and aren't going to fit in your jacket pocket. The solution? A small, foldable keyboard that works wirelessly so that you can use it with any PPC. The Belkin model we are looking at today operates through the IR port, meaning you should be able to use it with pretty much any PDA, from Palms to Pocket PCs including their Smartphone counterparts.
There are a few reasons for choosing to make a keyboard with an IR interface. The big one, as with most things, is cost. Implementing a Bluetooth interface adds to the price and complexity, and greatly reduces your potential market. Nearly every PDA made in the last five years has an infrared port on it somewhere; a much smaller number of the current crop (within the last two years) have Bluetooth. Typing isn't exactly a high bandwidth activity, so other than the convenience of BT, it's not needed for this task.
One compromise that has to be made with IR, though, is dealing with arranging the mirror so that the it actually reflects the signals from the keyboard to the PDA. In the case of my Toshiba e830, that meant turning it on its side and shifting into landscape mode. With Windows Mobile 2003SE that’s easily done; you can even assign the switch to one of the soft buttons. With previous versions of the OS, though, it's not nearly so simple, or in some cases not doable at all. Luckily for Belkin many older PDAs have their IR port on top of the device, making a change in layout unnecessary.
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