BootsnAll's Travel Community

Hi! I will be travelling for a year starting April and would like to take some sort of a portable word processor with me, as I like to pretend that I will write the next great American novel on this trip (I will probably forget the whole thing on day two, but we can dream...)

Anyway, I am not looking for anything fancy - just simple typing, I don't even need formatting. I did some search on this forum and it sounds like PDA plus folding keyboard is the way to go. I do have an old PDA (Palm m125) and could buy a folding keyboard, but how about transferring data? Does this mean every time I want to move my notes from the PDA to some internet space for storage, I have to install the PDA software on each computer that I am using in an internet cafe?

Or is there a better device than PDA + keyboard? What's most important to me is that it's light and compact.

Thank you!

Hi Ghoney,

I haven't used this, but Nick from Bali Blog was using this while we were over in Berlin for world cup.

It's the "Neo" model alphasmart:
http://www.alphasmart.com/products/index.html

Review:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1741938,00.asp

Nick seemed to love it. The screen is kind of small for me, but he said "it just works" and it doesn't take any time to set up. Just click the button, and it's ready. No boot time, etc. It's super thin, and pretty light although it is larger than a PDA. It appeared very durable too. The Dana model seems to be a big improvement on screen size.

If your PDA has a slot for an SD card then it should be easy enough to get access to a card reader at a cybercafe to transfer files to online storage.

Just checked and it looks like the m125 has an SD slot. Others may be able to comment on how easy it is to find facilities with card readers abroad.

I have the palm desktop software installed onto a usb flash drive . It works fine. A good word processor is Wordsmith. Go ahead and install a word processor like AbiWord Or Open office on the flash drive as well.

Thanks for the advices!

Fallenleafs, you will be amazed at the complete ignorance of the following question, but I can find the 'on' and 'off' switch and that's about it... So in an internet cafe, I'd plug in both the USB flash drive with the Palm software and the HotSync thing to the computer, and open the Palm software from the flash drive, and run the HotSync?

Ghoney you are correct.

heya ghoney, I currently use a palmTX and folding keyboard for my blog on the road - <a href="http://www.irelandlogue.com/about-ireland/miscellanea/snakes-return-to-ireland.html">here is a picture of me doing it</a>.

I have been using the PDA/folding-keyboard combo since 2002. THE most important thing is that your device has non-volatile memory (MOST devices are still volatile memory). Volatile memory means no charge = no memory. In other words, when the battery goes dead, you don't lose everything.

I had a fabulous palmOS Sony Clie and companion keyboard i used on my RTW trip. A charge would last me about 14 days of pretty constant use. When it crashed after 7 months on the road in Sydney and i couldn't charge it I lost addresses, phone numbers, recipes, short stories - REALLY heartbreaking. The experience taught me NEVER to buy a volatile memory device again.

My current choice of devices still isn't ideal. What I'd love is a device centred on battery life and portability. You know, pocket-sized, b&w screen, optional backlight, card backup and swappable/chargable battery. Such a thing doesn't exist at the moment. However, the presence of wi-fi and and the big screen on the TX is nice. I can plug in, bluetooth email or infra-red beam my data to other devices. Yeah, so a charge only lasts me a week - it really does eliminate the need for a laptop.

Call me old fashioned but after the hassle of travelling long distance with either a laptop or palm as writing instruments I have gone to Moleskine and when I need another I have it set up for someone to mail me another.

http://www.moleskines.com/?gclid=CJ6Lu_aiuYoCFQUgggodInmbug

I am still using an old Palm. I finally upgraded to a slightly newer (but still very old) Palm M105. The batteries last for quite awhile, it shuts off after a minute (so as to prolong battery life) and it takes notes just fine (which I then flesh out to make actual blog posts). If I lose it, I am out maybe $20 at the most. Old Palm Pilots go for a song on eBay.