Stowaway XT and Palm Ultra-Thin Keyboard

PalmOne Brand for Palm PDAs with the universal connector: Palm m125/m130, m500/m505/m515 and Palm Tungsten T/T2/T3.
ThinkOutside brand for select iPAQs and Sony Clies as well.
- by Lisa G., Editor in Chief

How Could the Stowaway Get any Better?

The original Stowaway is the most popular full-sized PDA keyboard. It's sturdy, has excellent tactile feel and is highly portable. Rather than sit on their laurels, the folks at ThinkOutside decided to add a slimmer, more stable keyboard to their lineup, and hence the Stowaway XT was born. It weighs in at 2 ounces less than the original Stowaway, and is more compact when open.

Design and Materials

The keyboard is attractive, slick and modern looking with a two-tone aluminum and black plastic casing. In fact, it is made of aluminum and plastic and feels durable.

To use the keyboard, you'll press a well-integrated release button on the edge of the unit, and flip it open. It's a two-section design, rather than the accordion 4 section design of the original Stowaway, and when fully opened, it locks in place. This means that you can use it on your lap or other uneven surfaces because it will stay firmly open and flat.

At top center, there's a pull-out, flip-up stand that supports your PDA for easy viewing when it's docked via the sync port to the Stowaway. You do not need to use batteries or cables, simply plug your PDA into the sync connector on your PDA and you're ready to type.

How did they maintain the full notebook sized keys and spacing while making the keyboard smaller? The top row of keys (number keys) are gone, and the Palm-specific keys such as "OK", "Home", "Find" and etc. no longer have dedicated keys. Instead, you'll hit the blue Fn (function) key just left of the spacebar in conjunction with the key you need. You can find the function key you need by looking for the small blue number/Palm function on the keys. There's also a green Fn key just to the right of the spacebar and you'll use that for symbols and page up/page down. See the top image for the function key layout.

Is using function keys for symbols and numbers cumbersome? Yes, but that's the price you pay for miniaturization. Other than slow-downs caused by hunting for function keys, I found I could really fly while typing on the Stowaway XT. It's as good as better notebook keyboards. And happily, keys like the spacebar, shift, backspace and enter are in their normal locations (some PDA keyboard move these around).

Dimensions:
Closed 5.5” x 3.9” x .5”
(139 mm x 99 mm x 13 mm)
Opened: 9.9” x 5.8” x .5”
(251 mm x 148 mm x 13 mm)

Weight: 5.6 ounces

Keyboard Layout: 100% full size standard QWERTY. Key Spacing and Travel: 18mm horizontally and vertically,travel: 3mm- the same as notebook computer keyboards.