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From: lisa@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM (Lisa Rogers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: HP-48 TEXT (was Re: HP95 keyboard?)
Message-ID: <1010019@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM>
Date: 11 Jun 91 19:55:34 GMT
References: <1991Jun10.063838.20847@marlin.jcu.edu.au>
Organization: HP SESD, Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 53

In comp.sys.handhelds, fin@norge.unet.umn.edu (Craig A. Finseth) writes:

    My quick summary is "unexpectedly good."  I have both a 48 and a 95
    (plus a dozen others, but that is a different article).  I believe the
    experts who say that the construction on the 48 and 95 keyboards is
    the same and so they *should* feel the same.  However, I find the 95's
    keyboard to be much better.

I don't find it that bad either.  (I have only had mine for a couple
of days; ask again in a month!).  I think that people's biggest
problem is that you really cannot type with all 8 fingers that you use
on a regular size keyboard.  If you are expecting to be able to, you
are probably going to be out of luck.  I have pretty small hands, and
I *can* type that way if I try; however, I make many more errors and
it really slows me down from 2 finger typing.

Actually, I have been thinking of teaching my right hand to type all
of the characters in a qwerty fashion.  The home row would probably be
S F H K (every other letter in the middle row).  I would use the left
hand for the shift/ctrl/alt/char keys.  It might be more efficient to
reverse the hands, now that I think about it, since I hardly ever use
alt/char/ctrl; I will have to try it.  That is as far as I have gotten
so far in figuring out the key to finger mappings, although I have
tried a couple of possibilities which failed.

    On the other hand, I use the 95 as a notepad (I am running an
    Emacs-type text editor, not the built-in applications).  Typing text
    goes very smoothly.  The horizontal format and QWERTY layout makes it
    very easy to find the keys.  In addition, I can fit about 1 1/2 hands
    on the keyboard, so I can almost touch-type.

What editor are you using?  I would love to have an emacs like editor
for this thing, just to compare it to the builtin memo editor (I am in
the emacs camp).  I downloaded an old copy of microemacs but trying to
move around the screen is a real problem.  Does your editor fit the
screen or do you have to move the around to the 4 parts of it?  Also,
how big is it?  Is it available?

If people have nifty public domain software that runs nicely on the
95lx, *please* post them (or send me mail!).  I have a pc-compatible,
but I never use it anymore -- it is really old and so is all of my
software.  Also, most of the software either doesn't work well with
the small screen or takes up too much space to be worth its weight.

    Yes, I find the keyboard a little tight but I am willing to live with
    that in exchange for having something that I can have with me instead
    of in my briefcase.

I agree!  (Some people may think that the 95lx is too big; it fits in
my purse just fine!)

Lisa Rogers
lisa@hpfclp.sde.hp.com