The PDA always seems like a great plan but have you every tried writing anything of length on a PDA touch screen or even using Graffiti or another pseudo input language, it's just not that viable for a report or any document of length to be generated on your average PDA.

But then we found the iTech Virtual keyboard, a device that claims to provide a full keyboard to use with a PDA but without the bulk of some of the fold up designs and it does this by use of some very sexy kit a  red diode laser.

The small black box device connects to a PDA via a serial cable and there is a new model on the way which supports a Bluetooth connection to remove the need for the unsightly cable, the installation of the software to drive the iTech virtual keyboard was quite a process on our 2210 Ipaq and even hard work when we borrowed a palm Zire just to check its won't a pocket PC issue.

It took multiple installs and downloading of new drivers not only for the iTech device but for the PPC operating system itself before the keyboard was recognised as a device, but finally after a few hours of fighting we got the virtual keyboard up and running. The keyboard is projected in front of the unit and its a full sized 63 key Qwerty keyboard in bright red laser, in fact its quite striking when you first see it especially in a low light environment.

Having finally got everything connected it was time to start typing in a rather bizarre Jean Michel Jarre fashion, your fingers break the beam in order for the iTech system to calculate which key you have pressed, we started slow with a few simple words and found the virtual keyboard does work. There does seem to be a knack to using the device it's all about the angle of attack you can't work at 90 degrees or beyond 45 degrees you need to make sure that your fingers break the beams somewhere between the two in order to get correct letter selection.

Another issue seems to be your natural inclination to start to move to the next key before you have fully removed your fingers from the keyboard, on a standard keyboard this wouldn't be a problem but the iTech virtual detects these as additional key presses giving rogue characters.

At slow speeds its easy to keep these rogue errors to a minimum but as you start to type faster more and more errors creep in making us wonder how on earth iTech expect you to achieve high numbers of words per minute is beyond us.

After about 30 minutes of hammering away on the virtual keyboard your fingers do start to ache a bit, we'd never really appreciated that keyboards have sprung keys for a reason, the damping effect that is missing from just strumming on a table or other hard surface makes the iTech quite painful for prolonged typing.

While we are on the subject of surfaces our first table turned out to be a good choice as we found that other surfaces especially those that are even slightly reflective play havoc with the iTech's calibration and increase the error rate, perhaps you should carry a matt in order to guarantee smooth operation but then that defeats the object!

The battery powered iTech virtual keyboard will run for about 2 hours projecting its red laser like pattern which should suffice for most travellers, but it would have been nice if it had a battery life of nearer 4 - 5 hours to match the common PDA standby time.

Retailing at around £80 the iTech keyboard is a premium over many of the compact and rollup keyboards more traditionally used by PDA owners but we have to question if this is really offering value for money. Firstly it's not easy to set-up then its not highly accurate if you type quickly plus it is very picky about the surface you use it on.

In terms of pure gadgetry showing off the iTech looks the part but we are firm believers that any gadget also has to follow the Ronseal approach and "do what it says on the tin" we could wait for the Bluetooth version but we really worry about how easy it will be to run this device over a Bluetooth link.

Perhaps as a result of this iTech Virtual keyboard review Lordpercy.com will contact Jean Michel Jarre and see if he can supply a mini 26 light beam keyboard version of his instrument control system as seen in London's Docklands in the 1980's.

Published - 24/03/2005

More Gadget Reviews-

[ Up ] [ Olympus Digital Voice Recorder W-10 ] [ Logitech Trackman Wheel ] [ Expansys USB Storage ] [ Starck Optical Mouse ] [ Nokia SU-1B Digital Pen ] [ iTech Virtual keyboard Review ] [ Motorola HF800 ] [ ZyXEL AG-225H WiFi Sniffer ] [ Iqua Smart Badge ] [ Moshi Celestra ] [ Western Digital Passport ] [ Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse ] [ WiFi Finder ] [ Targus Wireless Multimedia Presenter ] [ Targus Wireless Remote Presenter ] [ Targus Business Card Reader ]