I found the N810 slide down keyboard fine for entering parameters. Two hand typing however requires an external keyboard that stays put without being held. I purchased a Nokia SU8W Bluetooth keyboard and found it lacking. I want to draft articles so I purchased a mini-keyboard from DealExtreme. It comes with a compact USB cable on a reel. For use with my N810 I also purchased a microUSB to Female USA A cable which automatically switched the N810's USB into Host mode. If I had an N800 I would have purchased a miniUSB A to miniUSB B cable for a direct connect of keyboard to N800. URLs for purchasing the mini keyboard and both cables are at the end of this HowTo.

I tried the mini on my Ubuntu desktop and it worked well. On the N810 the keyboard layout was supported the same as with Ubuntu. The keys are small but I adjusted quickly. The function key worked with all the keys it was supposed to except for the up-arrow. This differs with what has been posted by some members of our community. I can live without up-arrow. I like the fact that a full set of symbol keys are included as on the qwerty keyboards we're all accustomed to. I do get some unwanted repeated keys and attempted to adjust the repeat delay with the Configuration Editor application -- the N810 doesn't appear to use the entered repeat key parameters and there's no way to turn off keyboard repeat. This bug has been reported but the response was "Fixed in Fremantle" which ignores the N8x0 user community. The lack of a spell checker in the Notes application makes finding duplicate keystrokes all the more difficult. I have the spell checker for MicroB but that's the only application it seems to work with. I tried Abiword but found it buggy on this platform. No doubt some will suggest installing Debian or Mer but both of those are IMHO a work in progress and I may loose some of the capabilities I've discovered and use daily in the Diablo environment.

It's not clear to me that the keyboard rate adjustments offered even work for a USB connected keyboard, I verified they don't for Bluetooth keyboards. The keyboard is black and all the keys that work with the function key are marked in blue -- normal key values are marked in white. The blue legends don't have much contrast with the black key color and are hard to see in dim light. The keyboard has LEDs for Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock.

I'm disappointed that the keyboard bugs in Diablo, latest N8x0 OS release, won't be fixed by Nokia. If it gets fixed it will be by the Maemo community. I would find making a delay of 0 turn off key repeating a workable solution. Desktop Linux distributions have a separate parameter to disable key repeating that doesn't appear to exist on the Nokia tablets. A USB connected keyboard brings me closer to being able to draft text documents on the N810 as long as I don't mind editing out repeated keys. The mini-keyboard deals with the portability issue. It's very pocket-able.

Such time as I find a verifiable solution for key repeat delay setting I will update this post. At that point the mini-keyboard would have achieved full usability.

Mini 56-Key USB Keyboard with Retractable USB Cable for PC and Laptops $21.64
https://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15953

Cable - microUSB to Female USB A for N810. Automaticaly sets the USB to OTG - $9.38
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...name=H11576-ND

Cable - miniUSB A to miniUSB B for N800 to mini keyboard. haven't tried this cable and am unsure if it sets USB to OTG - $4.08
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...ame=WM17494-ND