dsb@removethisportionbtinternet.com declared for all the world to
hear...

I have owned a few and I've found them to be advantageous.

Why?

Fantasy land again? A keyboard does not need to be looked at to be
operated, hence it needs some tactility. When one is operating a phone
one generally looks at the screen to see what one is doing, therefore
lack of tactile feedback is not an issue.

In your opinion. In my opinion they are great.

Hence why I've had/got a T-Mobile MDA Vario and Vario III - touch screen
for when it's useful (scrolling, selecting web links, selecting things
on the screen), but when I need to do anything more than single word
entry, I use the real QWERTY keyboard which slides out.

I can't stand using touchscreen devices which have no other (or too few)
hardware buttons.  My current device (Vario III) has:

Call button
Hangup button
Start menu button
OK button (+ another on the side)
Internet button
Mail button
2x Physical softkeys
Camera button
Voice control button (with separate push and hold functionality for
another option)
Scroll wheel
Normal 4 way joypad + centre select button.

Most, apart from, for example, the call/hangup/softkey buttons are
completely configurable to do what you want - rotate the screen, launch
TomTom, etc.

I've used a similar non-phone PDA which had just a touchscreen and 2
buttons - useless as touchscreen without stylus (ie. finger/nail) is
difficult to get accurate.  Okay in some circumstances - but stylus
works best for accuracy but you don't want to get it out much (I rarely
do).  Touchscreen is good for some things, whereas physical
buttons/keyboard is better for other things.  One of the reasons I could
never get on with an iPhone is the lack of hardware buttons.

D

On 13 Nov, 13:40, "R. Mark Clayton" <nospamclay...@btinternet.com>
wrote:

looks like the crowd would have been a lot smaller without the
journalists there to report on the crowd