Although a well equipped smartphone or PDA can let you leave the laptop at home, bashing away at those itty-bitty keypads or attempting to write lengthy emails with a fiddly stylus can soon become a chore.
Thankfully, there’s a range of keyboard accessories available, with one of the most popular being the ThinkOutside Stowaway Infra-red Keyboard (also sold as the Palm Wireless Keyboard).
Sporting a neat foldaway design, the Stowaway measures just 139mm x 97mm x 17mm when closed, with a quick double flip action opening up the keyboard to its full 251mm x 148mm x 13mm width.
Before use, a small driver has to be installed on your handheld device – as well as getting the two devices chatting to each other, it also lets you set up user programmable shortcut and command keys for fast access to applications.
Using the keyboard
Once the keyboard has been opened for use and the two AAA batteries inserted, it’s simply a case of slapping the PDA/smartphone on the cradle, angling the adjustable IR wand to line up with your PDA infrared port and you’re off.
Although the Stowaway has far less keys than a laptop/PC keyboard, the full-size 18 mm spacing between the keys and the Function/shift options let you rattle along at a fair rate.
Although we had no problem maintaining the IR link, one of our test units (a Treo 650) felt a little wobbly on the cradle – using an imate JAM Pocket PC in landscape mode felt a lot more secure, as did our Sony TH55 PDA (one of the best PDAs even invented, but that’s a different story).
Overall, the keyboard performed well throughout our tests, so long as it was used on a flat surface – trying to type with the Stowaway on our laps inevitably ended up with the keyboard folding up and the handheld being jettisoned (our solution – grab a thick book to rest it on!).
Conclusion
With its lightweight 5.75 oz (179 grams) design, compact, clever folding build and comfortable keyboard layout, we can thoroughly recommend the Stowaway keyboard for writers on the move.
It’s not particularly cheap ($70, £45), but its rugged construction should give years of use and it sure beats trying to write a long report on a phone’s keypad!
Rating: 87%
Specifications
18mm key spacing (horizontally and vertically)
3mm key travel – same as the best notebook computers
English QWERTY layout (4 rows of keys
Dimensions
Closed: 5.47″H x 3.82″W x .67″D (139 mm x 97 mm x 17 mm)
Open: 10.3″ x 5.7″ x 0.7″ (251 mm x 148 mm x 13 mm)
Weight: 5.75 oz. (179 grams)
Compatibility: check list of products
Filez
CSpotRun
AvantGo
Combining an application launcher with the Today screen, Spb Pocket Plus is designed to add a heap of functionality to your Windows Mobile 2003/5 device. 
It has to be said that some of the ‘extended themes’ are something of an acquired taste, but SPB have thoughtfully created a Webpage instructing enthusiastic users on how to create their own. 
Conveniently, the program can be run off a storage card to save device memory and there’s a ‘Safe Mode’ to help sort out any rogue software causing problems – just like its big brother, this only loads a basic set of drivers on start-up. 
We’ve had the Wicked Laser Green 95mw laser for a couple of weeks now. It’s falls outside the sort of things we’d normally test, but I’m glad we made an exception, because this thing is bonkers. 
It arrived well packaged in a rather natty box and we couldn’t wait to get it on. An unexpected lack of the required 2 x AAA batteries at our end lead us to initial disappointment but this instantly evaporated when it was powered and switched on for the first time. 
Safety
Conclusion
Palm’s PDA sales may be falling on lean times, but their hugely successful Treo650 smartphone continues to do brisk business, supported by an army of passionate developers producing a vast range of applications. 
The information is presented on TreoAlarm’s clear and simple interface, with weather icons displaying sunny, cloudy, rainy or stormy conditions. Underneath a text box offers more detailed weather information. 
With the under-whelming Pocket Outlook PIM that comes bundled with Windows Mobile, it’s not surprising that third party developers have been busy serving up their own offerings for users seeking more power. 
Predictably, the calendar application served up a feast of different views, including Today, Hourly Day, Hourly Week, Week, Agenda, Month, and Year, and you can jump from view to view via a drop down menu. 
Although we didn’t find Agenda Fusion’s Contacts interface to be a vast improvement over Pocket Outlook, it does have a few extras, including a preview pane at the top and the ability to attach a mugshot to any specific contact. 
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We were pleased to see that Agenda Fusion had included an integrated project management tool, which lets you organise contacts, tasks, notes, appointments and documents into Projects with the ability to track time and create reports. 
Aimed at aspiring superstar DJs, bedroom mixers and club jockeys, Numark’s entry level CD Mix 1 combo is a convenient package offering dual CD transports and a basic mixer. 
A large pair of LCD screens above each of the CD’s controls offers useful information on the modes selected and time remaining/elapsed for the playing track. 
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Our verdict
Hook it up to your home system, your hi-fi or zillion watt soundsystem and you’re off! 
It may not look as pretty as an old fashioned barometer, but Oregon Scientific’s Easy Weather System Pro can provide a wealth of information about the weather – with no need to tap its face to get the dials moving. 
Once set up, the large LCD screen provides indoor and outdoor stats for humidity/humidity trend and temperature/temperature trend as well as barometric pressure/trend (the trend readout displays an arrow to show whether the data is rising, steady or falling.) 
Before you start reading this review, let’s get a few things straight.
And if you like your cameras to look mean’n’lean with big shiny lenses, all-swivellin’, flip-out LCD screens with hi-tech add-ons like optical image stabilisation and bleeping bells’n’whistles, walk on by.
Although this approach may not appeal to the point’n’shoot brigade, for enthusiasts fed up with the endless button pushing and dial spinning that comes with most compact digicams, this camera is a revelation.
Sadly, there’s no built in optical viewfinder, although the big 2.5″ LCD 210k pixel screen performed well in bright light and can also display a live histogram display.
The camera is one of the smallest digital cameras with ultra-wide angle lens, and fits easily in a pocket, measuring 107 x 25 x 58 mm (WxDxH).
Shooting in RAW and spending a little time in post-processing produced some stunning results, but shooting at low ISO/high quality JPEG should prove fine for most users.
Because of its niche appeal, the Ricoh’s a tough camera to unreservedly recommend, but for keen street/landscape photographers looking for a rugged, flexible, high quality camera capable of the very highest results, we’d put the GR Digital right at the very top of the list.
Xara has been around for over a decade now, and although it may not be as well known as expensive rival programs like Illustrator and Freehand, it continues to offer astonishing value for money, providing ample power under the hood and enough tools to satisfy anything from graphic smudgers to arty pros.
Although it isn’t the most modern-looking of programs, Xara’s sheer simplicity and power makes it a far less daunting program to master compared to many high-end vector programs, with new users guided by a set of excellent help files and 80+ short movie tutorials.
Imported images can be resized, have text added and then exported as JPEGs with control over compression settings. 
The verdict