I’ve been playing with a new toy for the last couple of days — the Stowaway Sierra Bluetooth keyboard from Mobility Electronics (aka ThinkOutside, aka iGo).  It’s a very small yet full-sized keyboard which can be connected via Bluetooth to UMPCs, Tablet PCs, PDAs, and SmartPhones.  It comes with drivers for Windows XP, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian.  In fact, it includes several specialty keys made specifically for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC or Smartphone), but will work just fine on the other devices.

The primary benefit of the Sierra is that it’s a full-size keyboard which means you can touch-type on it. The key size and travel are on par with the average laptop keyboard making it very usable.  However, when folded up, it is small, only 5.0″ x 3.5″ x 0.9″.  It fits reasonably well into the front pocket of my Dockers.

Paring the device with my Windows Mobile device was simple and required only a few minutes. In fact, getting the drivers was incredibly easy.  You just point your browser at http://www.thinkoutside.com/ and it recognizes your device and suggests the proper driver.  Clicking the link downloads a .CAB file which installs directly with no PC required.

Once paired, typing on the keyboard results in a near instant response on the device.  It is nearly as fast as typing on a “real” connected keyboard.  The keyboard will shut itself off after a few minutes of inactivity to save battery life, but hitting a key will wake it up and it’ll be ready to go again after a second or two to reacquire the connection to the device.

When folded, the slick shiny case is prone to fingerprints and dirt.  Wisely, Mobility Electronics includes both a zippered case and a lint-free wipe.

I initially had a performance problem on my device after installing the drivers.  In fact, it was a serious problem in which the PDA slowed to a complete halt and had to be soft reset.  After playing around a bit I disabled PDANet, a program that allows easy tethering of the PDA to my Tablet PC as a modem.  That helped, but didn’t solve the problem completely.  I did some more searching and also ended up disabling some background services for an application/service called Shozu, that allows you to upload photos and videos to websites like Flickr and YouTube directly from your PDA phone with no PC.  The services monitored folders for new files, but I wasn’t using that feature (I prefer to launch the application only when I need it), so I don’t need those services running.  Since disabling them my performance is back to what it ought to be.

Amazon was selling the Sierra keyboard for about US$65 on sale (thanks JK On The Run for the tip), but the price has gone up a bit to $75.99.  Still, it’s a good price for a very useful peripheral.

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