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This isn't your ideal solution—as you've noted, DTP is currently OS X only—but it does work pretty well for me, especially when I'm thinking about a general topic and need to find information on it. I even wrote a post about the similarities between Joyce's method of composition / finding material and how Johnson uses DTP.

When Clearwire did this to me, all I did was write a lousy blog post about it and tell my friends not to use their service. Seeing something more substantive is impressive.

I was one of them and wrote about the experience here. The short version: they don't advertise their bandwidth throttling and don't warn when they do throttle your bandwidth. My roommate and I thought they'd be a useful alternative to conventional ISPs, but they turn out not to be.

I'm a "GAT" (meaning I teach an independent class) at the University of Arizona and ban laptops in my class for this reason and others, as explained here.

(A quick rebuttal of the predictable hit-n-run commenters: this doesn't mean I think every professor/teacher should ban laptops or that laptops are bad in other circumstances. I know that you don't misuse your laptop, and that such a policy is unfair to have the majority behavior dictate rules affecting the minority like you, but I talk about that stuff at the link.)

From switching, I learned that I didn't hit the "c" key correctly and that a wider hand stance is vastly more comfortable than conventional keyboards. But in the end I've found that my biggest problem isn't with typing speed, but with thinking speed, and that hasn't improved with a nicer keyboard.

This seems like the optimal division of time and one that keeps classroom discussions relevant. It also means that not having laptops and cell phones can actually make for a better overall experience.

Have you thought about buying them used, either from outfits like Abebooks or Amazon's second-hand market? I ask because those sources are where a lot of my older books come from -- and I read a lot of them.

I read a lot -- I'm a grad student in English, and see the /. link to my homepage for my book blog -- so I've paid a lot of attention to eBooks. For me, the DRM is still the big problem, as described in greater detail here. Like you, I find the idea of carrying around every book I've ever read appealing, along with one-click OED lookups. But the DRM is appalling.

That being said, I might try the Nook chiefly for its .pdf ability -- I have to read so many .pdfs that buying one might make sense just for the convenience of not having to print or be tethered to my computer.

Who knows? I suspect the answer to be no: we like the physical manifestations and possessions of the famous, as if we'll gain their powers or knowledge by proximity. And for writers, I don't think it matters what OS you use, although I like OS X; it probably doesn't even matter if you use a computer, a typewriter, or a pen: what matters most is your imagination and the power of expression. Everything else is secondary.

That being said, I can see the computers of famous authors one day being of value. For one thing, check out The Guardian's series on writers' rooms. If we're interested in the rooms, I bet we'll be interested in the tools.

This is based partially on what I see in bookstores and partially on my own experience, which I discuss extensively in Science fiction, literature, and the haters. It begins:

Why does so little science fiction rise to the standards of literary fiction?

This question arose from two overlapping events. The first came from reading Day of the Triffids (link goes to my post); although I don't remember how I came to the book, someone must've recommended it on a blog or newspaper in compelling enough terms for me to buy it. Its weaknesses, as discussed in the post, brought up science fiction and its relation to the larger book world.

The second event arose from a science fiction novel I wrote called Pearle Transit that I've been submitting to agents. It's based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness--think, on a superficial level, "Heart of Darkness in space." Two replies stand out: one came from an agent who said he found the idea intriguing but that science fiction novels must be at least 100,000 words long and have sequels already started. "Wow," I thought. How many great literary novels have enough narrative force and character drive for sequels? The answer that came immediately to mind was "zero," and after reflection and consultation with friends I still can't find any. Most novels expend all their ideas at once, and to keep going would be like wearing a shirt that fades from too many washes. Even in science fiction, very few if any series maintain their momentum over time; think of how awful the Dune books rapidly became, or Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series. A few novels can make it as multiple-part works, but most of those were conceived of and executed as a single work, like Dan Simmons' Hyperion or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (more on those later).

The minimum word count bothers me too. It's not possible for Pearle Transit to be stretched beyond its present size without destroying what makes it coherent and, I hope, good. By its nature it is supposed to be taunt, and much as a 120-pound person cannot be safely made into a 240-pound person, Pearle Transit can't be engorged without making it like the bloated star that sets its opening scene. If the market reality is that such books can't or won't sell, I begin to tie the quality of the science fiction I've read together with the system that produces it.

If the publishing system itself is broken and nothing yet has grown up to take its place (I have no interest in trolling through thousands of terrible novels uploaded to websites in search of a single potential gem, for those of you Internet utopians out there), maybe the source of the genre's troubles isn't where PC Pro places it.

I'd love to be wrong. But I don't think I am.

The Magicians is a surprise and delight: its language is not overly showy and yet often contains an unexpected surprise, especially at the ends of sentences, as this early description shows: "Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first." Until the last clause, one could be reading any novel, fantasy or otherwise, but saying that a blow from heaven would hit the tall first gives us Quentin's personality in a single line, and yet its ideas are spun coherently across the entire novel.

See also Lev Grossman's piece in the WSJ, Good Books Don't Have to be Hard:

It's not easy to put your finger on what exactly is so disgraceful about our attachment to storyline. Sure, it's something to do with high and low and genres and the canon and such. But what exactly? Part of the problem is that to find the reason you have to dig down a ways, down into the murky history of the novel. There was once a reason for turning away from plot, but that rationale has outlived its usefulness. If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

The big problem is that Jordan depends on cliche and an adolescent view of sexuality to fuel his novels. I read the first six books in middle school, and at the time my Dad wanted to see some of the "dragon books" I read -- he got through a couple of Wheel of Time novels before giving up. I thought he didn't know what he was talking about.

When I tried reading them again in college, my literary taste had developed enough to make the problems so obvious that I wondered how I read them in the first place: the characters were flat, the writing stale, and Jordan seemed to have so little grasp of how people behave.

That so many people defend Jordan's writing is one reason for the unfair "genre/literary" divide afflicting science fiction and fantasy.

There is good science fiction and fantasy out there; most recently, Lev Grossman's The Magicians astonished me. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is excellent. I could go on. Given that there is some really, really good material out there, the continued fascination with Robert Jordan or his brother-in-writing Terry Goodkind surprises me.

The big problem is that Jordan depends on cliche and an adolescent view of sexuality to fuel his novels. I read the first six books in middle school, and at the time my Dad wanted to see some of the "dragon books" I read -- he got through a couple of Wheel of Time novels before giving up. I thought he didn't know what he was talking about.

When I tried reading them again in college, my literary taste had developed enough to make the problems so obvious that I wondered how I read them in the first place: the characters were flat, the writing stale, and Jordan seemed to have so little grasp of how people behave.

That so many people defend Jordan's writing is one reason for the unfair "genre/literary" divide afflicting science fiction and fantasy.

There is good science fiction and fantasy out there; most recently, Lev Grossman's The Magicians astonished me. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is excellent. I could go on. Given that there is some really, really good material out there, the continued fascination with Robert Jordan or his brother-in-writing Terry Goodkind surprises me.

How does he compare to, say, the execrable The Shadow of the Wind, or other novels that shoot for the standards of literary fiction but all too often miss?

How does he compare to, say, the execrable The Shadow of the Wind, or other novels that shoot for the standards of literary fiction but all too often miss?

Seriously. I was just going to post on this very subject: it seems like people who are doing genuinely difficult and/or novel work don't want ceaseless distractions and ways of being interrupted; they want an environment conducive to flow. I collected some of the literature and essays on the subject in my post Laptops, students and distraction.

And this is coming from the guy who wrote this glowing review of the Unicomp Customizer, which is a modern Model M.

When you can prevent useless distractions, then you're really ready to go. Of course, I'm posting this on /., which shows me to be something of a hypocrite, but I think the point still a useful one.

When you can prevent useless distractions, then you're really ready to go. Of course, I'm posting this on /., which shows me to be something of a hypocrite, but I think the point still a useful one.

Without being a jerk, I would observe that part of the problem might be the cohort you're observing, since most students with anything going for them academically and intellectually will attend four-year colleges and universities straight out of high school rather than community colleges. Although it's possible to receive an excellent education at them and lousy educations at four-year schools (see the book Beer and Circus: How Big-Time Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education for more), by and large there's a reasonably strong correlation between school ranking and achievement of the students within.

If you were at, say, the University of Chicago rather than a community college, you'd be getting a very different experience.

Be wary of some of the wireless providers, because they seem to impose even more restrictions on Internet usage than wired providers.