Some keyboards, like the Targus Stowaway, are brilliant gadgets that single-handedly double the value of your Palm, while other challengers like the Accufeel G300 miss the mark and leave typists scratching their heads, wondering where the Shift key is. Keyboards are like that—it’s hard to make a portable keyboard that typists feel right at home with. That’s why we were eager to try Matias Corpor-ation’s Half Keyboard, a novel approach to typing.

The Half Keyboard is exactly what it sounds like—it’s a standard keyboard that has been cut in half, and consequently features just the left-side letters from Q/A/Z over to T/G/B. The gimmick is that the half-of-a-spacebar doubles as a sort of shift key; press the Space and Q together, and you get the letter P. Space-and-T gives you Y. By itself, the spacebar makes a space.

Initially, we had low expectations for the Half Keyboard; it just looked too hard to use. That’s why we were shocked to find that instead of taking days to master the Half Keyboard, we were typing fairly naturally within a few hours. The keyboard comes with a short but effective tutorial.

What we didn’t like was the complexity of accessing many of the less-common characters. Some keys have as many as seven functions, for instance, and you need to remember a slew of modifiers to get at them all. The Shift key, for instance, delivers upper case letters, though tapping the Shift key twice gives you access to special symbols like punctuation. You can also combine a Shift or a double-Shift with the Space Bar for two other combinations, and then there’s the Alt key and a Numeric Mode key to contend with as well. It can take some practice to master all the combinations—we often found ourselves staring at the keys intently, trying to remember how to get at the "|" symbol inscribed on the bottom of the Z key.

The Half Keyboard is extremely comfortable. That’s because the keys are full-sized. They have the same dimensions and travel as a real keyboard, so you feel like you’re typing at the desktop. The only difference is that you’re doing it with just one hand.

The standard Half Keyboard connects to your Palm’s HotSync port via a short eight-inch cable. It comes with its own leather carrying case, which you can use to prop up the Palm when typing.

If the Half Keyboard isn’t innovative enough for you, try the Wearable Half Keyboard. The Wearable version comes integrated with a pair of Velcro armbands; just slide the keyboard onto your arm and tighten the straps. Next, you thread the 4.5-foot cable through your clothing and out the sleeve of your typing arm. Connect the keyboard to the Palm and affix it to your arm using the included Velcro armband. The wearable kit includes a screen rotation program so you can see what you’re typing no matter how you strap the Palm to your arm. It’s a clever solution, and it works well—but to be honest, people stared. A lot. If you’re reluctant to look like a cyborg on the daily subway commute, you might want to use the Wearable Half Keyboard strictly in private. But if you’re a touch typist that doesn’t mind using a gadget that looks like it fell off of Seven of Nine, you may fall deeply in love with the Half Keyboard.

Good: Short learning curve, small and portable.

Bad: Some keystrokes are convoluted; people will stare, and not in a good way.

Verdict: One of the smallest and fastest keyboards around.

Rating: 4 [out of 5]

-Dave Johnson

Handheld Computing, issue 4.4