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The Palm(tm) Portable Keyboard is truly portable.  It weighs only 8 ounces and when folded the keyboard is about the same size a Palm III series handheld. The V series keyboard is has the outer shell finished in the anodized aluminum the same as the Palm V series. It comes with a neoprene zippered case to store the keyboard when you are not using it. If you really try, you can squeeze both Keyboard and the Palm V in the case, it is a tight squeeze, so I won't be doing this often. The keyboard is mainly plastic but does have a fair amount of metal components for strength and sliding open. It slides open very nicely and when in use is much like using a keyboard on a notebook computer. There are four extra buttons on the right hand side. They are to launch the four main applications on the Palm unit (Date, Phone, ToDo and Memo. There is also a Command and a Function Key to enable the four silk screened launch buttons (Apps, Menu, Calc and Find) you can also do things like turn on the backlight and perform functions like NEW, CANCEL, SHOW, DONE or DETAILS.  There are nine programmable keys to launch your favorite applications. For the average or even above average user this should cover all the main functions you would normally have to tap the screen for.  

I found that after a few minutes of typing with this keyboard I was quite comfortable with it, I would be able to type for quite some time. Just because I counted them I thought you should know that the keyboard has a total of 69 keys. Of course many of keys are multi purpose.

The one thing that I don't like about this keyboard is the clips at the connector are plastic and look like might break if not careful when you insert the handheld unit. I guess it's better to break the keyboard than your handheld, but I do wish the plastic was more like the hard plastic on the cradle for these tabs.

When the keyboard is unfolded in the top corners there are two perfect spots to store a stylus. I am not sure if that was by design or a manufacturing process, either way it works very nicely.

Final Words:
If you want to be able to enter a large amount of data or type a letter, this keyboard is a must have. Before having a keyboard I would only jot down simple notes or data input from the Palm unit, I would wait to enter the bulk of the data into a PC then sync the data to the Palm. Now that I have this keyboard I will not hesitate to leave the bulky notebook at home and just enter my email, data or letter on the Palm(tm) unit. In fact this entire review (all 400+ words) was written using the Palm(tm) Portable Keyboard, and I did not pickup the stylus once to do it!