what is the best way to learn to type?

I have been using qwerty keyboards for most of my life. True I took a few years away from such things, but I was fiddling with touchsensitive keypads on a Sinclair ZX-81 well over a quarter of a century ago and have used keyboards all day every day for the best part of the last 10 years……

So can I touch type? well here goes
the wuick briown fix jyunoed iocver thwe laxy vit
It appears not..

Recently I have been experimenting with a split, ergonomic Microsoft keyboard, this design kind of forces one to keep hands on either side of the keyboard and has helped me make some progress.

However quite the nicest idea to date has to be the no key keyboard (oxymoronic typing?). This little beauty has no numbers on it at all, so pretty soon you will have to be touch typing as there is nothing to look at.

Is is sad really that we dont see too much variety in such things, sad that I can’t type after all these years………

Around every January, when the days are long I start gettin a feeling of resltessness, of anticipation. I start counting the days not for spring, not for summer, but for my annual ( nearly ) cell phone upgrade.

This is the time of year I can contact the operator and demand a shiny new cell phone.

My most recent mobile phone upgrade was a Sony Ericsson M600i which has not been the best of my upgrades it must be said. I have been looking at the Nokia N95 as I have been trying to justify Mobile GPS for ages now and I am in need of a change, Cell phones do, as recent advertising justify, become a part of you, they are your eyes and ears, your security blanket, your camera, your mp3 player, your organiser, your office, the list is both endless and ever lengthening

Also one of the best things about upgrades is getting a freebie, like a free bluetooth headset or carry case.

Now it is rarely that I have fallen out of love with the present device. It is that gorgeous moment which awaits the consumer, that unhurried unpacking, that slow initial charge and that sparkly crescendo when the device first is allowed to breathe its first breaths - under, of course, my watchful gaze.

The new mobile phone ( thank goodness for mobile upgrades as the hardware is obviously super subsidised by the network ) will then have to be fully explored. Every nook and cranny of its menu/ operating system will have to be clicked upon and investigated. I wil teach it everything about me. Soon the phone will dance and sing responsive to my every whim; it will know who to allow to call and when, it will know how to ring early morning, it will know how to catch my attention when I am in a meeting, it will have been personalised…….

And then I must wait a whole year again for my next recent mobile phone upgrade

Just turned the key in the ignition and it started.
Always does my little rocking Ford Fiesta.

Baby it is true, no matter what I do as far as mobile phones are concerned, there will always be only one true love, my Treo.

I have battled with conformity now for years with a string or Sony Ericsson’s and, to a lesser extent, Nokias. But they all leave me cold.

The Treo ( I had a 600 ) was prehaps the ugliest phone I had ever seen when I first eased it from its box and Turned it On, but I was soon immeasurably pleased by its functionality and features.

The Treo is built on a Palm platform which is quick, responsive and intuitive. There is a multitude of high end applications for the Palm OS which never failed to amaze me.

• email client
• access ( type databases)
• paint
• sound on/ off button - very good idea that one
• action/ strategy games
• lovely touchscreen

I could go on.

Sadly Orange, my supplier, have ceased support/ provisioning the Palm Treo phones and I tried for a Sony Ericsson M600i. The Symbian OS is a long way from Palm’s sophistication.

I need one and I am looking the Treo 650 would do me, but the 680 is sweet as.