Dom Perignon II Speed Contest


How Fast Can You Type on Your Palm?

The two fastest entries won a prestigious bottle of Dom Perignon.
To know the answer, see the results of the Dom Perignon II Speed Contest!

Participants were asked to type the 40 words on the left with the method of their choice and record their time. The following methods were used:
FitalyStamp and the Fitaly Keyboards for the Palm organizer and the Pocket PC.
Silkyboard, Octave, and other overlay solutions.
The Qwerty on-screen keyboard and similar on-screen keyboards activated by a pen.
Graffiti, Jot, and other handwriting methods.

Obviously, the use of Graffiti shortcuts was not allowed and neither was the use of word or phrase completion capabilities such as the ones offered by Fitaly for the Pocket PC, WordComplete, TextPlus, Octave, or the one that is built-in Windows CE.

The use of an attached or built-in hardware keyboard was not allowed since the object of this contest was to compare input methods using pen input.

The contest ended on July 18, 2000.

Awards

Faith Perez and Ken Chan, both from Adelaide, Australia, win the contest and the two prestigious bottles of Dom Perignon: Faith completed the test in 29.36 seconds - close to 82 wpm - and Ken in 31.19 seconds - at 77 wpm.
The next 50 entries won a free copy of FitalyStamp or of the Fitaly Keyboard for the Pocket PC.
All participants made the demonstration that very fast text-entry is possible on your palm!
 

Analysis of Final Results

Most contest entries have been recorded with the FitalyLetris freeware game and are expressed in hundredths of seconds. Scores attached as gif file are available for most entries on the Domperignon Forum.

All Entries:

Rank Method Time WPM Participant Date
1 FitalyStamp 29.36 s 81.74 wpm Faith Perez July 18, 2000
2 FitalyStamp 31.19 s 76.94 wpm Ken (balmon) July 18, 2000
3 FitalyStamp 31.22 s 76.87 wpm Jared Feddersen June 29, 2000
4 Fitaly 32.28 s 74.34 wpm Ian Frank July 12, 2000
5 FitalyStamp 34.23 s 70.11 wpm Danny Lin June 21, 2000
6 FitalyStamp 34.87 s 68.82 wpm Will Lau July 15, 2000
7 FitalyStamp 35.28 s 68.02 wpm Michael Nelson June 23, 2000
8 FitalyStamp 37.67 s 63.71 wpm Ein July 1, 2000
-- Fitaly 38.06 s 63.05 wpm Will Lau July 13, 2000
9 FitalyStamp 38.56 s 62.24 wpm JohnH June 23, 2000
10 FitalyStamp 39.71 s 60.43 wpm Joel Morris July 17, 2000
11 FitalyStamp 39.93 s 60.10 wpm Paul Close July 18, 2000
-- Fitaly 40.12 s 59.82 wpm Ein June 20, 2000
-- Fitaly 40.91 s 58.66 wpm Paul Close July 17, 2000
12 Fitaly 41.01 s 58.47 wpm S London June 19, 2000
13 Fitaly WinCE 41.32 s 58.08 wpm Alan Perry June 26, 2000
14 FitalyStamp 42.35 s 56.67 wpm Bob July 16, 2000
15 Fitaly 43.29 s 55.44 wpm Scott Bender July 15, 2000
16 FitalyStamp 43.15 s 55.61 wpm Bob Cortopassi June 26, 2000
-- FitalyStamp 44.63 s 53.77 wpm Jean Ichbiah July 18, 2000
17 FitalyStamp 47.17 s 50.87 wpm Larry Chester June 20, 2000
18 FitalyStamp 47.35 s 50.68 wpm Kessler July 11, 2000
19 Graffiti 48.54 s 49.44 wpm Mark Tan June 15, 2000
20 FitalyStamp 49.43 s 48.55 wpm Adrian Smith June 19, 2000
21 FitalyStamp 50.68 s 47.35 wpm Justin Murray July 10, 2000
22 Qwerty 51.00 s 47.05 wpm Ted Martin June 14, 2000
23 Fitaly 53.58 s 44.79 wpm Mike Blyth June 20, 2000
24 Fitaly 55.00 s 43.67 wpm kaiwei June 14, 2000
25 Fitaly 57.59 s 41.67 wpm Jo Suzuki July 17, 2000
26 Qwertz 58.00 s 41.40 wpm Joachim Boltz July 6, 2000
-- Qwerty 61.00 s 39.34 wpm Will Lau July 2, 2000
27 Graffiti 63.83 s 37.59 wpm Jerry Kreifels July 15, 2000
28 Fitaly 64.17 s 37.09 wpm Richard Smiley July 11, 2000
-- Graffiti 67.66 s 35.47 wpm Danny Lin June 19, 2000
-- Fitaly 68.52 s 35.02 wpm Kessler June 26, 2000
29 Graffiti 69.09 s 34.73 wpm Heather Wardell July 3, 2000
-- Graffiti 70.50 s 34.40 wpm Adrian Smith June 18, 2000
30 Fitaly 72.00 s 33.33 wpm David Eckhardt June 22, 2000
31 Graffiti 73.63 s 32.60 wpm Stephane Negri June 23, 2000
32 Graffiti 75.33 s 31.86 wpm Anthony Colletti July 4, 2000
-- Graffiti 80.90 s 29.67 wpm Will Lau June 25, 2000
33 Graffiti 84.99 s 28.24 wpm Jerome Saint-Clair June 23, 2000
34 Graffiti 85.01 s 26.40 wpm dallas July 10, 2000
35 Graffiti 90.00 s 26.67 wpm Maurice June 22, 2000
36 Silkyboard 90.34 s 26.56 wpm Charles M. Holmes July 11, 2000
37 Keyboard Hack 91.00 s 26.37 wpm Melissa (mhao) July 2, 2000
38 FitalyStamp 93.80 s 25.58 wpm Manola Märtens July 4, 2000
39 Graffiti 101.20 s 23.71 wpm Richard Ross July 18, 2000
40 Graffiti 101.40 s 23.07 wpm Scott R. Almas July 3, 2000
-- Graffiti 105.00 s 22.86 wpm David Eckhardt June 22, 2000
41 Graffiti 107.45 s 22.33 wpm Bonnie Vaughan June 30, 2000
42 Graffiti 117.45 s 20.43 wpm Laurent Thaler June 23, 2000
43 Graffiti 120.00 s 20.00 wpm Bridget Almas July 6, 2000
44 Graffiti 130.00 s 18.46 wpm Jeff Shircel July 13, 2000
45 Graffiti 136.00 s 17.65 wpm Markus Bierkandt June 22, 2000
-- FitalyStamp 162.09 s 14.80 wpm Charles M. Holmes July 18, 2000
-- Jot 230.56 s 10.40 wpm Charles M. Holmes July 11, 2000

Statistics by Method:

Four main methods were used:

  • FitalyStamp was used by 18 entries,
  • Fitaly was used by 13 entries,
  • Graffiti was used by 19 entries,
  • Qwerty was used by 5 entries,

Below are the speeds in actual words per minutes (wpm) achieved with each of the four main methods:

Method Fastest Speed Average Speed Entries
FitalyStamp 81.74 wpm 57.73 wpm 18
Fitaly 74.34 wpm 51.03 wpm 13
Graffiti 49.44 wpm 28.19 wpm 19
Qwerty 47.05 wpm 36.14 wpm 5

And below are the times achieved for each of the four main methods:

Method Fastest Time Average Time Entries
FitalyStamp 29.36 s 49.34 s 18
Fitaly 32.28 s 49.83 s 13
Graffiti 48.54 s 90.95 s 19
Qwerty 51.00 s 70.27 s 5

The detailed statistics are shown on a separate page.
 

The Importance of Being Over 40 WPM

To conclude this overall presentation of results, we would like to emphasize the significance of achieving 40 wpm and more on a Palm organizer: This is the speed achieved by many average typists on the full 10-finger keyboard of a PC. So these results demonstrate that entering memos on a Palm organizer is now a realistic proposal with Fitaly and FitalyStamp.

Even for those who type very fast on a PC, the incremental speed is more than offset by the convenience of a machine that is always there with you, in your pocket, in every meeting, when you need to record a new idea, and always ready to start immediately. Carrying a laptop is not a convenient alternative, not to mention the time it takes to start a Windows application. And writing notes on paper is not a good alternative either with the time lost transcribing and the difficulty of filing.

So even for fast PC typists, the speed achievable with Fitaly and FitalyStamp combined with the convenience of a Palm organizer that is always with you, offers a realistic solution for text entry. What participants of the Dom Perignon II contest have now established is that...

The real purpose of HotSync and ActiveSync is
to transfer from the Palm to the PC!

Final Notes

Prior Contest
A first Dom Perignon Contest was run in July 1998, won by Marcus McRae with an entry at 65 wpm, using Fitaly 1.0. Two years later, with more input methods available, the time had come to reassess what can be achieved on these wonderful handheld machines. This was the purpose of this second iteration of the contest.

Test Paragraph
Here it is again, for those who find the text on the picture too small:

  What you need to do to have a chance to win the contest is to tap this sentence as fast as you can without any error. One more thing you need to have for a valid entry is a witness.  

Videos
Click on to watch our two winners demonstrating their phenomenal technique.

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Last modified 20 July 2000