My wireless keyboard has arrived and it definitely improves the writing experience. Currently I’m typing away while lying on the couch. The iPad is propped up next to me. If I want to look at what I am typing, I can look over to see it. However, it doesn’t seem as if that is even necessary when you are on a roll. It’s more useful just to see what you have typed when you think you have made a typo or need to refresh yourself on what you just typed.
It goes without saying that typing with an actual keyboard is more intuitive than the software keyboard on the iPad itself. Most notably because of the quotation mark key. Having to shift the character set to get to the quotation mark key is very unnatural, when compared to normal typing. Any punctuation besides the period and comma are much easier to use as well.
One slight drawback to the wireless keyboard is that not all apps support it fully. Most every app will be able to receive text from it, but they don’t handle keyboard commands very well. My current irritation is that Quickoffice does not work well with my keyboard. The arrow keys and commands don’t work. For the moment, this seems to be a common problem across all the major office suites for the iPad. The keyboard works fine in Pages and other iWork apps, but my main computer is a PC. I need apps that will sync with MS Office. The creators of Quickoffice are working to support the keyboard, as are the other office apps I’m sure. Until then, I have to make do. At least Wordpress for the iPad does have full keyboard support.
If you have the money for the wireless keyboard, I highly recommend it. Good luck finding it though. Both of the Best Buys in my home town were sold out. A few phone calls to other stores didn’t turn any up either. I had to order mine from Amazon.
