I never used a phonetic keyboard when I was learning to type in Russian. With enough practice, your fingers will get the hang of it. A major thing about the phonetic keyboard is that it's not standard. So other PC's might only have the standard format installed, especially in Russia. While it may be more confusing at first, in the long run it's more worthwhile to learn the standard format.

I'm not sure what phonetic keyboard is. (I guess it's when Russian letter A placed not on standard place but on the same as English A) I think it should be difficult to type in Russian without having Russian letters on physical keyboard. So if you just dabble in Russian you can use one of transliterating patterns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian The most used nowadays here is one called “Passport (1997)”. It goes this way: Privet, menya zovut Anton, ya mogu pomoch vam s russkim. It's a bit hard to read but it's ok. Also there could be some misunderstandings. For example a male name for Паша is Pasha. Also the name for holiday Пасха (Easter) is also Pasha. But I'd say it's pretty minor coincidence. But if you are going to learn Russian in earnest I'd advice you to learn Russian blind typing or to buy a keyboard with Russian characters. It looks like this: http://www.cyberstyle.ru/UserFiles/Image/desten_cyberbook/desten_cyberbook_16.jpg it has both Russian and standard English characters.