Ever since we discovered that our son’s PSP system can access the Internet (including The Straight Dope) my wife and I have been thinking about looking around for a cheap, portable means of accessing the Web. We’re looking for something we can use when we go to the increasing number of cafes and such that have wireless access. Preferably something you can hook up to one of those folding keyboards (doesn’t have to be a wireless keyboard, but it could be – CompUSA carries a wireless folding keyboard for $29, we discovered).
We are not looking for one of those sets that you have to access (and pay for) a service every time we open it up.
Anybody have any suggestions?
Define “Cheap”
It’s pretty easy to find a capable laptop, brand new for $600 CAD. I’d imagine a used one could be found cheap.
Or you could go with something like this, which I almost bought the other day for $228 CAD (Refurb).
You could always get your own PSP. Or you could buy a Nintendo DS and wait for Opera to come to North America. At this point, purchasing both brand new would probably run about $200 CAD)
Hit post too soon.
All those are capable of 802.11 wifi web browsing.
Obviously, the laptop is the most capable and versatile. The PDA is good if you need to keep a lot of info in a small package, plus it can do other things like games, GPS, etc. I personally have an old Palm Pilot that I use for flying. It hooks in to my GPS and gives me a moving map, airport info, flight planning, etc.
The PSP and DS are great if you’re a gamer, I haven’t touched a PSP since they were new, so I haven’t seen the new games, but the DS has a great assortment and is quite fun.
My wife has a 17" Mac laptop with wifi already, but it’s SUCH a pain in the butt to lug the thing around. It’s heavy. It’s something that could break easily. And it’s expensive.
We’re looking for small, cheap and lightweight. Kinda like my AlphaSmart notebook, which deosn’t have internet access – all it does is word process, but its durable, lightweight and gets 300 hours on two AA batteries (because its display screen is a black and white LCD matrix and it has no moving parts).
I know there’s a successor to the AlphaSmart called the Dana that runs about $400 on Ebay, which is exactly what I’m looking for, but when I see cheap I’m talking about less than $200, and closer to $100 than $200 if possible.
The appeal of something like a blackberry or a palmpilot and a folding keyboard is that it is something that you could carry around, replace easily if you lose it (at that price) and is unlikely to be easily damaged.
T-Mobile MDA
It’s a phone, a PDA with touch screen, a camera, plays MP3s, full QWERTY keypad, does both GPRS data and WiFi–for three hundred bucks.
Gods, I want one of these!