Significantly Faster Than Palm's Qwerty
	by Robert Carnegie

One reason I bought a PDA was to have something lighter than a laptop to take notes on trains! I was looking forward to using Grafitti but was disappointed to find out that I was still quicker using the onscreen Qwerty keyboard. I also don't like what Grafitti does to my real handwriting (e's and a's especially): I didn't write the wrong letters, but I had to stop to think.

It does take a while to learn the Fitaly layout - so does touch typing. I did it by choosing six letters at the centre of the screen and writing down as many words as I could using them, then adding some more letters and doing the same, until I had several sets of words covering the whole alphabet. Then I practised each set of words until I was comfortable - and significantly faster than Palm's Qwerty layout, though still nowhere near proper touch typing. "Your mileage may vary"; I think I'm a maladroit. Meanwhile, I also quit wishing there was a right-hand-side shift key.

I've corresponded with the company about this and now I'm trying to put these exercises into software on the PalmPilot. And it seems that my brain has enough room for a separate stylus alphabet as well as 10-finger typing and handwriting. Fitaly allows concurrent Grafitti which is tremendously useful for mixing numbers with letters, but since I'm only scribing it in small doses now, my handwriting has recovered.

Robert Carnegie