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Showcase of Stylii: Yafa 4palm

© Janice Karin

I use my Palm for almost everything. Consequently I don't usually carry a pen with me. Every once in a while I do need a pen and I am at a loss. I decided to try a few pen/stylus combinations to see if I could find one I liked.

I liked the look of the Yafa 4palm when I saw it on StylusCentral and decided to give it a try.

Yafa 4palm is a black ink pen, orange highliter, 0.05 mm mechanical pencil and stylus in one. It has a rather thick barrel and comes in five translucent colors: . I have a green model.

I took the stylus out of the rather nice but large plastic snap case it came in. This made a nice first impression but the case is very large, limiting its portability.

Then I tried to use it. I say tried to use it because I had a very hard time figuring out how it works. The top has labels for each of the four functions and it seemed like you were supposed to turn the plunger piece to line up somehow even though there are no markings on the plunger. I had little success with this method; it seemed to randomly eject one of the four implements.

Frustrated, I went to www.the-gadgeteer.com to see if Julie had written a review. I don't like reading other reviews of a product before I write my own. I only resort to this practice when I am really having problems with a product.

Luckily Julie had reviewed the stylus. From her review I was able to determine the proper way to use the stylus. Rather than trying to turn the plunger, you have to face the label for the implement you want to use up, tilt the stylus back about 30 degrees, and hit the button on the holder clip. Hitting that button again retracts the implement. It works well but was hardly intuitive.

I tried the stylus first. The tip is about the thickness of a default III stylus. The casing is thick enough that it is a bit hard to hold. I found the most comfortable position to hold the stylus is all the way at the bottom, just above the metal tip, resulting in an almost 90 degree angle from the Palm. This also resulted in the best grafitti recognition of the positions I tried.

Unfortunately the best grafitti recognition this stylus has to offer isn't terriffic. Of the stylii I've tried only the floating*point was worse.

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