Comment Alphasmart products are excellent (Score 2, Informative) 428
I have owned an Alphasmart Dana for about a year and a half now, and it lives in a backpack that goes with me pretty much everywhere I go. It is not as small as a clam-shell style device might be but it is lightweight, has a full size keyboard (that is a joy to type on) and is durable as hell. The battery lasts about 20 hours even after a year and a half and it will take three AA batteries in a pinch. It runs Palm 4 and has two SD/MMC slots, allowing for back-ups on the fly (with 3rd party software like CardBkup or Back-Up-Buddy) and a whole lot of additional storage (I have the complete American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus on mine, as well as a bunch of other things).
At the time that I bought it, the other option from Alphasmart was the AS3000, which did not appeal to me at the time. Since then, though, they have released the Neo. It is essentially the same as the AS3000 but with the form factor of the Dana and a screen that falls somewhere between the two. It runs for 700 hours on three AA batteries. If they had these when I was buying I would likely have chosen a Neo over the Dana. In fact, my mom and I split on a Neo for my sister who is in college now. She has a laptop (a fairly nice one, too) but wouldn't take it to classes unless she absolutely had to (for the normal reasons: weight, boot time, battery life) but the Neo is light and tough and instant on.
Alphasmart has a great user forum that I lurked through for quite a while before purchasing. I still go there from time to time to see what's up.
And no, I don't get any kickbacks from the peeps at Alphasmart. I am just a fanboy, apparently.
At the time that I bought it, the other option from Alphasmart was the AS3000, which did not appeal to me at the time. Since then, though, they have released the Neo. It is essentially the same as the AS3000 but with the form factor of the Dana and a screen that falls somewhere between the two. It runs for 700 hours on three AA batteries. If they had these when I was buying I would likely have chosen a Neo over the Dana. In fact, my mom and I split on a Neo for my sister who is in college now. She has a laptop (a fairly nice one, too) but wouldn't take it to classes unless she absolutely had to (for the normal reasons: weight, boot time, battery life) but the Neo is light and tough and instant on.
Alphasmart has a great user forum that I lurked through for quite a while before purchasing. I still go there from time to time to see what's up.
And no, I don't get any kickbacks from the peeps at Alphasmart. I am just a fanboy, apparently.
