Are you familiar with T9...?

I'm familiar, but don't use it. There are different jargon's for different people that I talk to, and it just gets in the way for me.

same here. i'l always use only T9 to text my friends. it is easier to type in T9 than in ordinary way where u have to keep on pressing the buttons for a number of times.

i use t9 all of the time, i find it alot easier to use, instead of writing the whole word out, i would find it very strange if i did not use t9 now as i am so used to using it

I'm not sure what Nokias use for predictive text but I never got it to work on my 6230; my completed typing came out like gibberish. However, my new BlackBerry 7130g has RIM's version of T9 and it doesn't really need to be taught. It's a bit of a no-brainer, really. Go to your local phone shop and try it out. For typing input where there are multiple letters on each key, it is way faster than multi-tapping. So if you can get it to work on a mobile phone, it will be a big advantage to you. An alternative is to get a Palm with Bluetooth. One of the standard apps in the Palm OS is an SMS interface, so you can use the PDA to input the text with Palm's Graffiti -- very fast -- and then connect via BT to send (and receive). I used it a lot with my Tungsten, and then my Axim (but it wasn't free with Windows Mobile; nothing is, except the headaches). The only tip I can give with T9 is, don't watch what you are typing until the word is complete.