I am looking for a portable word processor to take with me when I
travel around the world next year for the purposes of keeping an
internet blog that I can write whilst not sat at a computer, and
without transcribing the notes from pen and paper. I am due to be
travelling throughout the world including much of South America,
Australia, and Thailand, hence I will need a diverse portable device
with several specific requirements, as outlined below. Please note
that I will be using this device purely for the purposes of word
processing and nothing else, thus it does not need to have any other
features.
SPEC:
1) It needs to be small (no bigger than an A4 sheet of paper) and lightweight
2) It needs to be battery-powered, preferably with a long battery life
3) It needs to be cheap - perhaps no more than £50 or £60 or even
less: I am happy to pay for a second hand older model if I can find
one. Also I dont want to spend a lot of money on something that might
get stolen: the shoddier it looks, the better
4) It needs to be easy to connect to peripheral devices, i.e.,
computers in internet cafes throughout the world. Since I am going to
poor parts of the world as well as rich ones, I am expecting to use a
wide range of computers with varying degrees of modernity. Some may
have a USB port, some may have serial ports, some may have floppy disc
drives, etc. Essentially I need to find a device that will enable me
to transfer the text files from the portable WP to the PC via whatever
means available: a choice of floppy disc, USB memory stick or serial
port would be ideal. Preferably I would like there not to be a long
software installation procedure every time I use a different PC, as I
will have to keep uploading the software over and over again each time
I change PCs. I would like the transfer to be quick and easy and
preferably compatible with software on 'most' PCs, e.g. Windows
Notepad, Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Netscape etc.
5) It needs to be durable.
6) It needs to be able to hold a significant amount of text: as a
ball-park figure, I would say at least 10,000 words.
7) It needs to have a QWERTY keyboard
I have been looking around on the internet for a couple of weeks and
found a few possibilities. Check out this link to get started:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/24/190236
(Particualrly the article posted by jhoger). I have seen the
Alphasmart devices (in particualr the 2000, 3000, Dana and Neo) but
all of these seem slightly out of my price range and I'm not sure if
they'll be compatible with all the computers I'll be using.
I look forward to your learned reponse.
Sam |
