Dom Perignon IV Speed Contest Results

Posted By: Ryan Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:08:40 AM

The Dom Perignon IV Speed Contest ended on November 7th, with the forty participants recording an impressive average speed of 52 words per minute for text entry on a handheld! In addition, it saw the 80 WPM mark broken for the third time in the history of this biennial contest.

The Dom Perignon contest was sponsored by Textware Solutions and cosponsored by Astraware, Blue Nomad, Neohand, PocketInformant, SoftMaker, StylusCentral.com, Quik Sense, and ValkSoft. The winners in the two categories are Jim Belich of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Erwin Franz of La Palma, California:


Category              Method                           Speed              Winner

Palm Handhelds   FitalyVirtual for the T3    80.88 wpm    Jim Belich
Pocket PCs           Fitaly for the PPC            77.44 wpm    Erwin Franz

Each winner will receive the prestigious Dom Perignon award. Over 40 participants from all over the world entered the contest this year using a variety of input methods from different vendors. The contest results confirm that there are now faster alternatives to handwriting recognition on PDAs: The average speed achieved with handwriting method is well below the average 52 words per minute achieved by all participants.

Another conclusion suggests that the Fitaly keyboard layout, based on idea of minimizing pen travel, provide the fastest speed on PDAs. Participants using Fitaly keyboards for Palm handhelds and Pocket PCs cruised at a speed approaching 59 words per minute.

Several participants made attempts with more than one input method, thereby showing that the learning curve for trying alternative keyboards is very short. Several of those who ended up with scores in the 70s had never used Fitaly before the contest. One example in point is Jim Belich who won this contest with FitalyVirtual at 80.88 wpm. Jim is actually the same person who won in 2002 at 84 wpm on a thumboard. So while the thumboard was marginally faster, one may wonder if the slim difference justifies using two hands instead of one, when you are likely to need the other hand for other tasks like holding a phone in one hand, while the other hand enters notes on your conversation.

Like prior contests held in 1998, 2000, and 2002, the Dom Perignon IV Speed Contest confirms that it is possible to enter text in PDAs at speeds over 50 words per minute. Actually, the contest even registered 14 entries over 60 wpm, and 10 over 70 wpm.

PDAs continue to play a key role as real business tools. PDA-based programs like email, messaging, and other important data entry applications have become a way of daily life. The fast single-handed input methods used in this contest continue to prove the important role they play. These methods are actually so efficient, as well as ergonomically better suited, that the computer in your pocket may well become your primary computer!

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Hmm...

eston @ 11/11/2004 1:51:50 PM #

I might have to finally try fitaly.

..: eston
http://www.hyalineskies.com/

RE: Hmm...

digilaw @ 11/11/2004 5:58:06 PM #

Ditto

new thumb board layouts?

southbound747 @ 11/11/2004 2:08:28 PM #

well it seems someone at palmone should pay attention to this. i don't know why they are so wedded to to the idea of the qwerty layout. i read someplace that when the qwerty layout was originally made it was desiged to actually NOT be the fastest way to type on old manual type writers. keys were jamming with other configurations so the qwerty layout is by design supposed to slow you down!

why noy a new thum board based on the fitaly layout or something similar? i pesonally don't want to use a stylus. i like thumb boards like on my reo 600. but i am sure they can come up with a better layout than qwerty.

RE: new thumb board layouts?

indesman @ 11/11/2004 4:47:33 PM #

There are keyboards that have the keys laid out for maximum touch typing speed of which the best known is the DVORAK (named for the key layout.) Research has supposedly shown that switching from QWERTY is relatively quick but few people ever do it. Of course FITALY is optimized for use with a stylus and there is probably some other arrangement that would work best for a thumboard. Seems like the thing to do is to make the elastomeric keyboard underlay be user replacable. That way the manufacturer could produce multiple layouts and the user could pick whichever one he or she likes. At a few pennies each, they could include two or three with every device. OTOH, they could put them in blister packs and charge $25 apice for them like they do with headphones, chargers, etc. etc. etc.

RE: new thumb board layouts?

conflagrare @ 11/11/2004 5:14:16 PM #

So... in effect, you are asking every one of PalmOne's customers to learn to use a non-qwerty keyboard?

I wonder how the sales is gonna do with that... hmm...

RE: new thumb board layouts?

CarlJ @ 11/12/2004 2:57:18 PM #

Actually, QWERTY was not designed to slow down typists, that's a myth; it was "designed to place the most commonly used letters on the opposite sides of the keyboard, making jamming mechanically less likely." (quoting this article http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_248.html which, in turn, points to a lengthy and quite interesting paper on the subject).

FITALY was, indeed, optimized for use with a stylus, which consisted of a) grouping the most common letters around the center, and b) arranging letters so that the next letter in a given word was most likely adjacent to the letter just struck. Both of these sound like excellent criteria for a keyboard that's going to have two thumbs hovering over the middle of it (though it certainly isn't a layout I'd want to ten-finger touch-type on).

I've been using FITALY for years and would love to see a Treo 650 with a FITALY keyboard, but it'll never happen -- familiar almost always beats superior, in the mass-audience consumer marketplace, which is why most of the world is cursing at virus-infested PCs, rather than using Macs.

All hail Jim!

GregGaub @ 11/11/2004 9:07:35 PM #

Jim Belich is the guy who smashed their records using a Treo thumboard last year:
http://www.fitaly.com/domperignon/domperignon3.htm

Way to go, Jim!
I wonder what his graffiti speeds are. :)

-- SeaPUG: http://www.seapug.com --

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!! Silly conclusions rock!

whitemiata @ 11/12/2004 9:49:04 AM #

>>One example in point is Jim Belich who won this contest with
>>FitalyVirtual at 80.88 wpm. Jim is actually the same person
>>who won in 2002 at 84 wpm on a thumboard. So while the
>>thumboard was marginally faster, one may wonder if the slim
>>difference justifies using two hands instead of one, when you
>>are likely to need the other hand for other tasks like holding
>>a phone in one hand, while the other hand enters notes on your
>>conversation.

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

I love it... does anyone else see the sillyness in that comment?

"one may wonder if the slim difference justifies using two hands instead of one"

Ok... so let me see if I get this... one hand is free for other things... the other hand holds the stylus...

and the third hand holds the PDA?!?!?!

:-P

Too darn funny!

...

Anyway... as far as the same dude winning in 2003 and 2004... kudos to him... except for the fact that reading the rules it becomes abundantly clear that it would be pretty easy for someone who just wanted a free bottle of Dom Perignon to ask a buddy to "certify" that he in fact achieved a certain result.

not saying that's what happened... just saying that occam's razor may be considered here.

Alessandro

RE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!! Silly conclusions rock!

dgalvin @ 11/12/2004 12:13:10 PM #

>>> Ok... so let me see if I get this... one hand is free for other things... the other hand holds the stylus...

and the third hand holds the PDA?!?!?! <<<

A desk or table or lap could hold the PDA ...

RE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!! Silly conclusions rock!

whitemiata @ 11/12/2004 2:14:04 PM #

...or you could have your secretary follow you around and hold it. Maybe a seeing dog with a special stand protruding from it's head...

Yeah, there are plenty of situations I hadn't thought about.

Of course then there's the fact that I would guess MOST FOLKS would have a very hard time doing something else with their hand while entering data at 70wpm on their PDA.

Alessandro