I’m doing an internship in D.C. next semester, and much of my job will probably consist of taking notes at meetings and events. Unfortunately, my handwriting is illegible to all but trained experts, and so I’ll need to type my notes if other people have to read them. It would be really helpful if I could have a small, portable device that I could type on. I can’t afford - and don’t need - a laptop, and Alphasmart’s products are good but pricey. Does anyone here know of something similar to the Alphasmart 3000 - or failing that, a place where I could buy used/refurbished units?
Oh - regarding price, I’m hoping to find something less than $150. Any thoughts?
You might be able to get a PDA with a portable keyboard in that price range. You can then sync it to your computer and print out the notes.
I recomend and use a Palm Vx and portable keyboard - if you have a computer to sync it to.
The palm Vx is a old, discontinued model and as such you should find it on the cheap on ebay. for note taking it is great and has many hours if not days of battery life. It’s b&w screen is a downer, but not bad if your eyes are good and is the reason for the long battery life. They sell a keyboard made just for the V and Vx, unlike the universal PDA keyboards today, and I got one about 6 months ago on ebay for under $15.
You could also get the Palm V, but that’s short on memory, 2 mb instead of 8, still OK if you just use it for text entry.
For word precessing you would type it into the memo section and edit and spell check later on your PC or get a aftermarker palm word processing program.
I suspect you can get the whole thing for less then $75, maybe much less.
Well, I as coming in here to recommend the Alphasmart Dana but I see you already nixed it. Anyway, I looked into this a while back. I fyou search for “portable word processor” you can find old archived reviews. Most older stuff you can get on EBay for a good price. For instance, you can still get the older Alphasmart 2000 for pretty cheap…
I had the same dilemma when transcribing scrapbooks at Lincoln Center—I was never able to find a doohickey I could trust and/or afford, and wound up reading the notes into a tape recorder and transcribing them later. Would this be an option for you?
I still think you need a laptop. Even a very old, cheap laptop can handle that task.
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- $150 is not much, if you want something that can run any “real” WP program. I have seen old laptops at computer shows for that much, even less, but these were very old, 100Mhz and 200Mhz CPU’s, 386’s and 486’s, that won’t even run most software now. The least I would suggest is a Dell Lattitude CPi, which trades for about $250 typically, it’s a 300Mhz cpu with a 20-gig HD usually. …I think you’d be happier with a laptop because if you have to carry around something that is as big as a laptop anyway, sooner or later you’re gonna wish you could run regular computer programs on it, and you can’t run regular programs on a PDA.
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- There’s places that specialize in selling used and refurb laptops. Frequently these are corporate lease program returns, and not retail consumer returns. There’s one company that’s online and has been around for years now, I can’t remember the name right off but they run print ads in Computer Shopper magazine all the time. If you can stretch to $400, you have a number of options.
- Or you can take a few hundred bucks cash and go to a computer show and get a better price, but the catch there is that you usually get no warranty at all.
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The OP mentined meetings and events. Power outlets are often hard to come by, and most laptops don’t have enough battery life for hours of typing. Something like the Alphasmart or one of the older Windows CE palmtop computers (e.g. IBM WorkPad z50, HP Jornada 820) might be a better alternative. Battery life on my old HP 820 was over 9 hours - I used it all the time for taking notes on (or goofing off during) all-day meetings.
One problem with buying used is that it often comes with a worn out battery, and it’s hard to find replacement batteries for older models. Check first before any purchase.
one solution that’s a little unfashionable but has worked well for me is a personal organizer… not a full-fledged PDA running an extensible operating system, but one of those things they sell in business supply stores that look like calculators that were pumped full of steroids so that they could support a full (if small) typewriter keyboard.
I got one years ago and still use it regularly, despite the fact that I have several much more expensive PDA’s, because for simply entering text on the go quickly, it has no equal. The keyboard is small enough to be pretty much portable but larger than all the included or snap-on thumb keyboards you find on PDAs.
Interestingly enough, my particular model (a sharp EL-6790 ) had a really odd software interface with the PC-Sync that seemed to be designed to not let you type in notes on the organizer and get them out on the PC, which was what I wanted it for in the first place. However, I was able to use some simple C++ code to crack their file format and get at the goods… I would hope that recent models make this easier.
PS: Oh, and the thing runs for about a year on two watch batteries. 
take with 2 grains salt and post again in the morning. 
I use an old AlphaSmart 2000 tht I got online for $75 about four years ago. It is FINE and just the thing. It has a small lcd window, but it accomodaes about four lines of text which is about all you need if you’re just taking notes.
Laptops are FAR INFERIOR to it for note taking. It has the following advantages:
- Instant on – you turn the thing on, ou are ready to take notes. We’re talking a one-second wait time. Try booting windows on an old laptop, then botting your word processor, and check out the difference.
- Ease of data transter – you just boot up your favorite plug your keyboard plug (Mac or IBM, it has ports to both kinds of keyboards, though I don’t think it has the wireless interface of the 3000
- Battery life. This is the killer. 300 hours on two AA batteries. I kid you not. The device has no moving parts – no hard drive, no floppy drive. It is great.
- Durable – I have dropped mine on several occasions, picked it up, dusted it off and kept on keeping on
The AlphaSmart has limited memory – but those limits are not really a problem. It has eight registers storing about 16K each. That’s a LOT of note taking. Chances are you’ll never use more than two registers in a day.
The thing is, the AlphaSmart is MADE to take notes, laptops are not. I’ve tried taking notes on laptops, the AlphaSmart is a far superior solution.