Inputting data to PPC. Fitaly?

  • Thread starter Thread starter tourdebill
  • Start date Start date
T

tourdebill

Guest
I might resort to paper, but I am giving my PPC a chance. The biggest challenge is inputting data. I seem to spend too much time correcting myself using the block recognizer. I am trying Fitaly which may do the trick, but it has a high learning curve. What do others use to improve their ability to take notes etc. on their PPC?
 
Tired of PDA inputs

I tried FITALY and calligrapher and block recognizer and grafitti and the on screen qwerty and the full screen thumb board thing that someone makes, and they all, ALL, are slower and more frustrating than a simple pad of paper and a pencil or pen.

That said, for stuff that doesn't change often, like phone numbers and birthdays and reference materials, the PDA is great, plus, I can play Arvale, journey of illusion on it, which, of course, is much mroe difficult paper.

I have found through trial and error that paper is better for me, because the input is just to clunky in the PPC.

After all of that, FITALY was the fastest for me after I learned it, and I could get like 35-40 WPM, which is a bit faster than I type on a keyboard (I know, it's on the project list) The connection between my brain and my hand is more strongly wired in the handwriting direction than the tap-tap-tap direction.

Ecg
 
quick pda entry

This may not help with PPCs, but I use TealScript on my Palm. I tried Fitaly for about 3 months and could not remember the key placement. I spent too much time trying to figure out where the next letter was in that arrangement. Since I write in all caps, I'm fairly quick with graffiti. Graffiti2 sucks badly-who came up with the idea of 3 strokes to create a single punctuation mark?

I used the latest script profile on the Teal Point site, then went through the retraining, where you enter 500+ alpha characters and 200+ numeric. I ran the autotuning, which was fascinating to watch and took over 2 hours. Finally stopped it when it had 26 matches left to correct. I had to tweak the "d" recognition a bit, but it will now recognize my handwriting without me slowing down a bit. It's a great program.

If I have to do something quickly, I have a small Clairefontaine notepad for those entries. I put one item on the paper and then it gets tossed to my inbox for processing.
 
Re: quick pda entry

teripittman said:
I'm fairly quick with graffiti. Graffiti2 sucks badly-who came up with the idea of 3 strokes to create a single punctuation mark?
Click to expand...
I agree with you. Sometimes companies make dumb decisions (for example in 1980's IBM chose Intel processor for PCs instead of Motorola 68000. It significantly slowed down the progress in personal computing).
Graffiti2 is big step backwards in Palm PDA usability. International (Polish for example) characters require making at least 2 strokes - one in the right and one in the left part of the input area!
TesTeq
 
major problems with fitaly going well with treo650

hi
know it's a different machine but i downloaded fitaly and to my tungsten t3 (palm) and was excited at first. however, i 'm a touch typist from way back and i found fitaly infuriating. i was itching to get it off the pda in the first couple of days. big problem... i couldn't delete it. i guess there are instructions somewhere but i need to delve a bit quicker. it was not like deleting an application. i tried. but still it stayed there. (my husband was a bit annoyed at me because i downloaded it to his as well and he hated it but couldn't get rid of it) hmmmm
anyway my treo 650 arrived last week and i'm in love with it. i didn't think i would be.. being a touch typist but i'm sold on it for quick entry (even one handed). i can get a lot done on the bus with heavy bags on my lap... draw mind maps in a notebook then convert to task lists... i love it. for those of you 'afraid' of the qwerty keyboard on combination phone/pda's.. don't be -it is fast and easy ... i'm loving just having one device.
cheers Helen
 
I find fitaly very useful, and quite fast. It does have a pretty steep learning curve, but I've been using it for quite some time now.

Having said that, for brief notes (a couple of lines or less) I use calligrapher, while if I have a lot of input (more than a paragraph, say) I use my portable keyboard. So I find myself using fitaly less than I used to.
 
Give Calligrapher a try, I have been using it for a bit of time and what I like about it are the scripts. By itself it is ok, but when you start using the scripting part of it, it really becomes amazingly easy to use.
 
MessageEase

I use MessageEase, which, like Fitaly, is an alternate keyboard entry for the palm. I've been using it for a long time and am pretty quick with it, and can also graffiti pretty good, but I still find paper to be better to think with. Sometimes while I am entering data directly on the my T3 I just loose my train of thought. With paper, I am just able to think better.

Dwight...
 
I Forgot to mention my new DigiMemo

I just bought it, so my experience is so far limited, but it really looks to have a lot of potential for me, especially if I can get my hand writting to convert to text with any degree of accuracy.

Dwight...
 
I like fitaly quite a bit, particularly its shortcut function. However I still use pen and paper for meeting notes and the like.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top