When I got my first PDA years ago, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I could enter text quicker using the letter recognizer or the on-screen keyboard. Since I often use my PDA to take notes, the answer quickly presented itself: they're both really slow.

SpeedScript is an alternative text entry program based on the concept that when you type a letter, 50% of the time the next character you will need is a vowel or a space. So when you tap a letter, a little blue box opens up, letting you slide the stylus to those characters. If that isn't clear, check out this video.



It looks a bit confusing in high speed, but since there's only a few characters in the blue box, you can memorize their locations pretty quickly. Still, I find that blue box rather distracting. Personally I prefer TenGO for quick stylus-based text input. Of course, the quickest solution is to plug in an external keyboard, but that only works if you have room in your bag for the keyboard, and the time to unfold it and plug it in.

SpeedScript is available for $12.99. A free trial is available, which lets you write up to 7,000 characters. I like this as a method for letting you try the program before you buy it, rather than having the program expire in a few days whether you've used it or not.