Installation is easy. Genovation includes an automatic installation program and an operations manual. No additional cables are required because the Travelboard connects easily to the Palm Pilot's cradle via the serial port, or you can use a Palm accessory cable with a serial port connection.

There are some things you need to consider when deciding between this and the more portable offerings from Palm Computing and Targus. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of this keyboard and the alternatives, then decide:

Strengths: The Genovation's typing area is well designed and solid. I didn't care for the flimsy feel of the Targus and Palm portables. It also draws zero power, ensuring that you do not drain your PDA's batteries prematurely.

Weaknesses: The Genovation keyboard is not portable in the same sense as the Targus and Palm offerings, both of which fold neatly into a package the size of your PDA. If you take notes at meetings the Genovation is much quieter - the alternatives make clacking sounds while the Genovation keyboard makes no noise. So it boils down to how much "baggage" you want to drag to the meeting, and the distraction factor of keyboard noise.

Things to consider: Genovation claims that they have a Windows CE driver for this keyboard, but that it does not work with Pocket PCs (such as the HP 54x-series, Compaq iPaq, etc.) I have an older driver disk that allowed this keyboard to work flawlessly with an HP 545, so I know it can be done. However, do not expect Genovation to support this. They also claim that this keyboard will not work with Handspring PDAs, so if you have one of those pass this keyboard up. Finally, if your Palm PDA is one of the newer models that use USB instead of serial, this keyboard will not work for you - it connects via a serial connection.