I see some organizers with a keyboard on Amazon for $10, but I have a nagging suspicion that the manufacturer did not find it in their budget to invest in such trivial usability features like searching through collection of notes. Or, if they did, they forgot to advertise it in product description.
Can anybody suggest a good product here? It has to have a real qwerty keyboard, support convenient notes management (which I think should boil down to searching through them) and it should not be bloated with prestigious brands, gps, network connections and other such knickknacks to the point of hitting the price of Blackberry. I guess a USB port to synchronize notes with desktop would be nice.
I believe a Blackberry can do what you want, and since you don’t want the phone capability, you can get an antiquated refurbished model for around $20.
I had a Zaurus SL-5000D (or whatever the variant was called that could switch between English and Japanese modes). And I loved it. But I’m not sure I’d recommend it for the OP.
First, it’s just a little too big to carry comfortably, the keyboard feel is not the best in the world, and the screen is pretty dim. Since I was shopping a few years ago, and I was as much interested in having a hackable linux box in my pocket as a PDA, it was the best option available, so I settled for the mediocre hardware. But nowadays, you probably don’t have to.
Second, Sharp basically stopped updating the apps, and the final versions of a few of them really sucked. If you’re willing to replace Qtopia with OpenQt and hunt down and install the replacement apps you need, this is no problem at all. Or if the one you find has the right version of the “office suite” (not the first version, and not the last one). But otherwise, it might be a problem.
I’d bet you could get a Treo 600/650 or Tungsten C/W for less money, or an equivalent-age Blackberry, either of which will probably serve you better. You might even be able to get a newer model.