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.

It's clear that nobody has truly solved the problem of how to efficiently enter text into a device that does not have a full-sized keyboard, judging by the sheer volume of software that exists to attempt this feat. AdapTex is interesting in that it is a slightly different take on this age-old problem. Rather than trying to replace your favorite text input method, AdapTex exists to augment it with word and phrase suggestions that, if correct, can significantly cut down on the number of letters or words you need to manually type.

Although I haven't been using it long enough for the adaptation process to truly start understanding my most popular words and phrases, already I can see some benefit as AdapTex understands some very common ways that sentences start, given one or two initial words. Probably my only complaint with this sort of system is that I'm already fast enough at entering text on my device (I happen to use a Pocket PC) that stopping to read the suggestions actually just slows me down if it doesn't happen to suggest something that is useful for me. In fact, often I could have already typed the whole sentence in the time it takes to type a bit, stop and scan, type a bit more, stop and scan...

Of course, for people that are painfully slow at entering text on a mobile device, software like this could be a real lifesaver. I'm going to continue to use the software until the free trial expires before deciding if it adds enough to my text input speed to justify the approximately $50 USD regular price (after exchange). If you're interested, you can still get in on the beta, and be eligible to purchase the software for an introductory sale price that will save you approximately $20.

TenGO is an alternative input panel for Pocket PCs and other mobile devices that we've covered previously here at Download Squad. They're worth mentioning again first because they offer a truly useful and faster way to input text than those that ship natively on Pocket PCs, and second because they have set up a new site, called TenGO Challenge.

TenGO Challenge is a new project that the TenGO team is putting together as a response to the amount of feedback they received regarding the "TenGO Girls" - three girls who can input text using a stylus (obviously using TenGO) at rates of 70 to 75 WPM. TenGO has the amazing videos showing the girls doing their thing on their site. Apparently they've had a number of people contact them to complain that either they didn't believe the videos, or they thought they could do better. So TenGO is launching a competition on the TenGO Challenge site.

TenGO is looking to get over 1000 users to submit typing speeds of over 50 WPM within the next 3 months. Give it a shot!

[Update: Our commenters are the best! In the comments below, Tory mentions that TenGO offers a free version, which is essentially the 1.0 version of their software. While I can attest that there is enough improvement in 2.0 to justify the purchase, 1.0 is a darn good product as well, and if you can get it for free now, I'd definitely recommend doing so! Thanks Tory!]

I use a Pocket PC very regularly, and the one thing that I've always had trouble with is fast text entry. The built-in text entry tools are okay, but have subtle flaws that made my experience with them very sub-par. For example the transcription engine, while quite good at writing recognition considering the constraints of the platform (nobody's expecting Tablet PC quality handwriting recognition) is very hampered by the small size of the screen - particularly with somebody with handwriting like mine. Letter recognition, which is popular amongst ex-Palm users, sort of leaves me cold, and the soft keyboard is simply that - a keyboard, with no added functionality to make it easier to use on a small screen.

TenGO is a soft keyboard add-in for Pocket PCs (and other platforms) that adds some logic to the keyboard that makes it astoundingly easier to use. Anyone that has used the T9 text input method on mobile phones will grok what TenGO is doing very quickly.