Changing your Android's default keyboard

- The Android Market has many different

keyboard options for Android

you might want to try, like SlideIT, for example. Assuming you've already downloaded a new keyboard and you'd like to try it out, here's how.

- From the home screen, tap the Menu key and choose Settings. Scroll down and tap on Language & keyboard . Under Keyboard settings, you'll see any keyboards you've downloaded along with the Android keyboard.

- Tap the box beside a keyboard to select it.

- You'll be notified that add-on keyboards may be able to collect the data you type. Ensure you're comfortable with the keyboard and the vendor supplying it before you hit OK. Only download software keyboards from reputable vendors and only ever from the Android Market.

- Below, you'll see the settings options for your new keyboard. Tap any of these to alter the way the keyboard works.

- Depending on the keyboard, you can choose to alter things like whether hitting the spacebar twice inserts a period, whether new sentences and proper nouns are automatically capitalized, how auto-correct works and so on.

- At any time, you can go back to the default Android keyboard by tapping the checkbox beside a downloaded keyboard to deselect it.