Everyone loves those new hand-held computers. The latest version of the Palmpilot weighs just 115 grammes, and stores 8Mb of your expense account forms, as well as other, non-mission-critical stuff such as e-mails from the boss and business targets.

But there is a snag. While busy execs on the move find these devices really handy for scheduling meetings and reading e-mail, actually inputting text can be an industrial-sized pain. Your choices are: scraping with a stylus on the touch-screen and hoping the image-recognition software can decipher your handwriting; poking with the tip of the stylus at a tiny, on-screen image of a keyboard; or finding an office with a PC and either hooking the Palmpilot up to it or transferring data by infra-red rays.

Well, now you can say goodbye to that I'd-be-quicker-using-the-damn-phone misery, with the Stowaway keyboard. Folded up, it looks about the same size as a Palmpilot and weighs around 225 grammes. Unleashed from its bonds of chrome, it becomes a full-size keyboard, with 19 mm of space between the letters, and 3 mm of "travel" when each key is pressed - just like the real one back in the office. Just plug it in and start typing.

The Stowaway Keyboard, around $100 (€96), is available on the Internet at www.thinkoutside.com and from computer suppliers.