I ended up ditching the Zire/Palm keyboard combo in favor of a Clie + Clie keyboard, a cheaper set [$75 for both, including Documents to Go, which is the portable version of Word] with more technological advances. On the Clie, there is also a hard plug-in connection between PDA and keyboard, as opposed to the fiddly infrared sensor on the Zire/Palm keyboard set-up. Thank you to Super Todd, my landlord, who sold it to me.

Since last night I have been experimenting with data entry onto my new mini-‘puter. The cramped keys take some getting used to, but they’re responsive, requiring no pounding, so they’re not too hard on my hands. If I type quickly for an extended period of time, my wrists hurt, but they do that anyway with laptop or desktop boards. So far, my mini-‘puter appears to satisfy my need for light, compact, quickly accessible and comtaible word processing. Further updates as I continue testing.