I am looking for an electronic device that will help me take journals
on my three month cycle tour.  My device requirment is general because
I frankly
don't care if it's a PDA, sub-notebook, sub-PDA, etc.  I only need the
following requirements met.  They are:

Semi-Affordable---$200ish

Long battery life---at least 20 hours on a off the shelf battery configuration)

QWERTY or fast keyboard for typing---not interesting in pecking with a
stylus for typing

Compact and durable---must be durable enough to go in a bike bag and
not take up too much room

Easy system for transfering files off the unit---i want to be able to
upload journal to the internet.  i don't care if it is by memory card
transfer or built-in tcpip stack and network connectivity.

I am aware in the past such devices existed (ex. Psion) but I need to
be able to find such a device without encountering dead end links and
ebay auctions in far away lands.

If I were you, I would explore a mini-disk dictating machine that I
could upload to something else. This would eliminate the need for a
keyboard, etc.

I would go with somthing like a Palm Zire 21 ($99) and buy an
attachable keyboard accessory to add on to it. They are very portable
and would serve to your needs well.
Palm: http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/zire21/
Keyboard: http://www.palmone.com/us/products/accessories/peripherals/#keyboards
(I reccomend the keyboard shown at the top of the screen once fully loaded.)

Have fun on your trip!

I would suggest visiting AlphaSmart.com. They have 2 possible
products: The Neo and the Dana.

1. The Neo. A small portable word processor (very compact and easy to
transport but with a full keyboard). Six line screen (b&w), about
$200. Runs for about 500 hours (!) on regular AA batteries. Runs on
its own barebones operating system--it only does word processing, but
it does it well! Incredibly durable (Designed for education market and
lots of hard knocks). The only limitation is memory--can only store
about 80,000 words (about a standard novel). Text can then be
downloaded to a PC via a USB cable (can also get a cable for older,
non-USB PCs)--no software to install (although there is a more
sophisticated software solution for transferring files). It's great if
the 80,000 words is enough.

2. A step up is the DANA (About $375). Same compact form and
portability, pretty durable, too. It has a larger screen (maybe 8
lines high, I'm guessing?), runs on the Palm operating system. Has an
enormous amount of memory for text files (16 MB) plus expansion slots
for writing to certain kinds of memory cards. Because it runs on Palm,
you can add on lots of other non-word processory bloatware, too :)

The two bad things about Dana: It drains a set of regular AA batteries
in about 25 hours. (Comes with a battery pack which you can quickly
recharge.) The other problem is that IF you run the batteries down,
all the addons in the memory (including your files) get lost--that's
why you REALLY SHOULD keep duplicates of your files on memory cards!
(This is what I've picked up on the message boards; cannot speak from
personal experience.

I have owned the Neo's predecessor, the AlphaSmart 3000, for about 3
years and can personally vouch for the durability of the batteries
(only on my third set of regular AAs) and the amount of abuse these
things can absorb.

BillSmithBooks.com