One of the best things about reviewing products is that every once in a while you get to review something that seems to have been made expressly for you. You review a few turkeys and a lot of well made and well thought out products that don’t really get you excited, but every so often there’s a product that fits you so well, you just look at it and think, “Why didn’t someone think of this before?” The Q-Pad keyboard is one of those.

Some time ago I reviewed the Thumboard and gave it a good review. It deserved a good review; it was nice, ergonomic, and worked well. However, as much as I liked it, it suffered from being another gadget to carry around, one which I often didn’t have with me when it was needed. What I really wanted was a keyboard that cost me little or no extra effort and gave me nothing extra to carry around. That seemed like a kind or silly wish until I got a pre-release version of the Q-Pad and realized that the folks at tDevice were thinking just the same way I was.

If you look at a Q-Pad hooked to a Palm and closed, it looks just like a very stylish leather flip case. Rather than flip to the side, the cover flips down. It has a Velcro closure at the top, a little leather strap at the bottom to connect the cover to the back of the case, and the back has a plastic cradle-like base that holds the Palm firmly. Just looking at it from the point of view of a case the design is well thought out and very attractive. It’s a touch thicker than most flip cases, but about the same total thickness of the Palm in most hard cases and the case feels like it offers a fair amount of protection. There is also a stainless steel plate over the LCD screen underneath the leather for maximum protection. If that’s all it was it would be a very nice case. But that isn’t really the best part. When you unfasten the Velcro and open the case you see that the inside is a keyboard. The back folds down to make a rest to hold your Palm at a convenient angle on an desktop and the keyboard lays in front, ready to type with your two index fingers. It’s laid out with all of the numeric functions in a sort of pad-like arrangement at the top, cursor keys in the middle, and the various alpha keys arranged in a curve in a standard QWERTY arrangement. It also has a caps lock, space, backspace, tab, field up, field down, and shift keys. While the version I am testing doesn’t have them, future versions will have programmable keys, as well. The keys are well arranged and while not quite as ergonomic as full-sized keyboards or the Thumboard, but you get used to them quite easily.

Everything about the Q-Pad shows that a lot of thought went into it. The way the keypad portion of the case is attached by a flexible strap lets you fold it behind the case when you want to do pure stylus input or play a game. The clips that hold the Palm into the case are strong and secure but allow you to detach it very easily for syncing. Nothing blocks access to your stylus and the flexible Velcro tab is easy to hold out of the way to do IR beaming. The driver utility is elegantly simple, allowing you to set key repeat delay and speed, to enable beeps for keypresses and to enable the keypad itself. The quality of the leather, the stitching and finishing are all excellent.

The keypad itself is best used with a two fingered hunt-and-peck method while the Palm and keypad are resting on a desk or table. It is somewhat less convenient to use when you are holding the Palm in one hand, cradling the keypad in the other and using a thumb to type. Since there are no menu or “slash command” shortcut keys, you sometimes need to use your stylus in addition to the keypad.

At its best the Q-Pad isn’t really a replacement for the full-sized fold-up keyboards, but it was never intended to be. If you’re thinking of crafting a multi-page document or writing the great American novel on your Palm, I don’t think the Q-Pad should be your first choice. It’s an adequate keyboard for light use, but it’s not ever going to be the first choice for high-volume text entry. But if you’re like me, a Palm user who occasionally wants a keypad but doesn’t need it so much that it’s worth the hassle of carrying an extra lump of hardware everywhere, this is the item for you. The Q-Pad is about convenience -- the adequate keyboard you have with you is better than the fantastic one that’s sitting back in the office. That’s the real strength of the Q-Pad. You’ll find that you use it a lot because you always have it with you.

Best of all, getting a nice leather case and a keyboard can easily cost you more than the price that tDevice is asking for the Q-Pad, so you don’t even have to feel guilty for getting it. Which is more than you can say for a keyboard you pay good money for and then let sit on your desk collecting dust.

Tucker Hatfield
Palm Editor