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Device for Taking Travel Notes?
the Anonymous Wanderer writes "When I go in vacations, I like to take notes and upon return write a travel story for my friends. Until now I've been using a paper notebook, but found that I'm so busy when I come back that the notebook sits for weeks or months unopened. On the other hand, I have some 'dead' time during trips and I'd like to take the notes electronically (final editing could be done upon return). I don't want to carry a laptop or a PDA (too expensive, plus I want to be away from computers at least those 2 weeks per year). Any suggestions for a light, cheap, keyboard-equipped device? Like a travel clock + keyboard and more memory and USB? Thanks, the Anonymous Wanderer."
A calculator is always nice to have. And you can plug in a keyboard. And while you're out traveling, you can also be collecting data!
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You want a Tandy WP-2 or Radio Shack Model 100. Go here: http://www.8bit-micro.com/wp2wp3.htm
You want an electronic device, that has a keyboard, you can type on, but is not a laptop or a PDA? Is there a punchline here?
Christ, buy a Palm IIIe and a keyboard from eBay. Way less than $50. If that's too expensive, stick with your notebook and buy a scanner.
Try here: Alphasmart. They even have many models which will work off of AA batteries.
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Happy Trails!
Erick
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If too expensive is the reason you do not want to carry a laptop or a PDA, then I strongly suggest you get one of those el-cheapo Palm Vx's off eBay for like $20 or something.
:)
You can also get a foldable portable palm keyboard for less than $5.
It's really portable and quite comfortable to type in too.
I always carry these around when I go wandering -- they are good companions in the wilderness (read books, take notes etc) and you can read them in the dark too (they come with a back-lit display).
Besides, using them does not make you feel like you are using a computer-ish device, just think of them as nothing more than advanced note-taking tools with alarm clocks and games
And oh, if you are the type who hikes/climbs mountains etc., you could hook up a GPS to your Palm to look up directions using something like Cetus GPS - that way you have a GPS tool, alarm clock and a note-taking tool all bundled into one.
Depending on your travel, if your laptop gets full of sand or falls into the water, or you fall off a bike and break your $600 PDA, you definitely want to have a notebook and pen handy.
Or, wait. Just skip the electronic gadgets all together and bring a 2 oz notebook and pen.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
This almost sounds like a troll -- "I don't want to carry a PDA, but I want a device with a keyboard and USB. A travel clock with a keyboard? What universe are you from?
Anyway, I recommend getting a cheap early-model Palm Pilot (circa $100 or so, especially if you get 'em used) and a keyboard. I used the Palm m500 and a Logitech keyboard (about $75, less used, I assume) to write a travelogue on a trip this summer. The battery life on the plam impressive, and if you lose it, you're only out less than $200. Or much, much less if you buy used.
One caveat: the accuracy on those tiny keyboards sucks. Expect to spend some time cleaning up yuor speling on your home pc.
I have the Visor with the collapsible keyboard and I used to take that with me for my travel writing and although it worked ok it kept crashing like crazy. I bought a Psion 5 on eBay and it ROCKS! Comes with a keyboard ( a little small but usable ) built in voice recorder. Notably it takes a standard CF card and I shoved a 40 something meg card into it. It comes with reasonable versions of Word, thesaurus, spell checker, etc and it works great. I even have an Ethernet adaptor for it.
You can see see the eBay Psion 5 stuff here. Runs on two AA batteries. I wouldn't have thought to get one but I got the recommendation from Robert Young Pelton author of the World's Most Dangerous Places. If it's good enough for him....
Check out a thing called the alphasmart.
http://www.alphasmart.com/
it has all the features you are looking for.
You want to be away from a computer, but you want an electronic way to take notes? Does Not Compute.
:-)
:-)
Honestly, get yourself a Palm and the Palm UT Keyboard or even the wireless IR keyboard they sell. OK, so it's electronic. It's still the most convenient you'll find, and has a ton of other features as well. Like reading ebooks on the plane on the way to your vacation, then taking notes while on the vacation, then playing games on the way back from your vacation. It works out quite nicely.
These guys can give you great advice on which model you want to get. They've reviewed just about every handheld in existence.
Disclaimer: I am one of "those guys".
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
On our recent honeymoon in NZ I used a USB MP3 player with a mic to record short notes. Worked great, got lots of ambient sounds to go with the pics, plus now I'll always know how dorky I sound in person....
My wife is a novelist, and has used her Alphasmart for years. She loves it. It's lightweight and easy to type on.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Been meaning to buy one for myself for ages. Especially in the traffic in the morning, when I have a bright idea, hell of a lot easier to speak it than write it down.
Why does it have to be written? It sounds like since you were writing it down on pen and paper you had todo lots of transposing already.
Why not invest in an mp3 recorder and use it to keep an audio journal of your vacation.
Then when you come home you can just sit down and listen to the entries and use them to write your story.
Firstly, mp3 recorders and the memory they use are cheap.
Secondly, it's alot smaller and lighter than a pen / notebook.
Thirdly, if your've near the right facilites you could even upload your log entries to a server just in case you use lose the thing.
You could even setup a webpage so your friends and family to co surf to your site and listen to your log entries.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
If you're taking along an iPod (and I have no idea if you are or not), how about getting an iTalk to go with it and dictate your notes?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I'd also suggesting looking at Psion's old PDAs (Series3, Siena, Revo), which were even smaller, had reasonably good keyboards, and excellent software that you can also use for tracking your schedule, calculating exchange rates, storing phone numbers, etc. This is what I've usually used as a travelling companion... except for the times when I really wanted to get away from the 'tronics, and instead used a notepad of paper and a pencil for keeping a journal.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I have, and have used, a Tandy 200. Connect via serial port, dump the data. This, as well as the Tandy 100, plus the WP-1, and other varients are really primarily text entry devices today, though they have the ability to be somewhat more. (I know the Tandy's come with a rudimentary spreadsheet, as well as a database. Not sure on the WP-1)
The biggest problem is going to be cost. For what they do, they are very expensive for the casual user. If you are a reporter, or freelance writer who can get a lot of use out of one of these, I would say go for it.
Folding keyboards for Palm and PockPC devices are reasonably comfortable for most people to enter text with. I am not fond of the thumbpads for entering text, but if you are comfortable text messaging on a cell phone, or with a Blackberry, you might want to take a look at a Zaurus 5500, which has been comming down in price.
If you prefer to "write" there are notepad data entry devices for the various PDA's as well.
Further on the "write" path is the data pen that keeps track of the movement of the pen and then downloads it via a USB port. I do not know how much memory they have, and would suspect that they are designed around taking notes at a meeting, vs. keeping track of the two week trip to Tibet.
If you don't mind a piece of electronics, but want to stay away from a computer/pda, you might want to look into a small typewriter. Type your notes, then when you get home scan them, OCR the scanned text, and post the results.
You may also find that whatever hotel you stay at as you are visiting have typewriters available for guests. This may not be handy when riding on the train and the muse strikes you, but you could use such to transcribe whatever notes you have taken into something you can scan.
For that matter, you could just do as you are, with the itterative step of scanning in your current notes, posting them as images, then manually typing the notes and decide if you want to have both the original scan and the text, or one or the other.
Another variation on that if you happen to have a cammera with a macro lens, or even a cell phone with a built in camera, would be to take photos of your notes that you can post along with whatever photos you take of the area. This would be also handy for keeping track of what you are photographing. This would work also with a film camera, but you would have the additionall wait involved in getting it developed and scanned in. Though some camera shops will allow you to get the pictures on disk or CD instead of or in addition to the prints.
Lastly you can also find digital voice recorders that you can dump the recorded audio to a computer at a later time. Memory costs dropping have really improved the amount of time you can record on these with. You might also contemplate the same with a DV camera.
Just some ideas, others will have more.
You never know...
with about 60 seconds of searching on eBay (check user BuyEssex) I was able to find a Sony Clie (monochrome) PDA for under $20 and a keyboard to go with for under $1.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I love my Jornada 820. Windows CE device with full laptop keyboard, 8.2 inch 640x480 vga screen, built in v.90 56k modem and an 8 hour battery. For writing, nothing does better.
I picked one up on eBay two years ago for around $250 and it is worth every penny. Not a lot of options for upgrade since the OS is on a ROM but I wouldn't trade mine for anything.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Symbian phones can use Palm keyboards. Note that the Nokia 3650 is a GSM world phone, so you can take notes (and send email) from pretty much anywhere.
It was a Newton. Jobs killed the Newton division shortly after he came back to Apple, partly due to poor sales (although they were picking up), and partly because the Newton division had close ties to former Apple CEO Scully (the guy who forced out Jobs the first time).
If you take the palm with keyboard route as a lot of people are suggesting, I recommend SiEd for text editing, it saves files as normal text files on the memory card.
If you carry around a cellphone, you can then upload the files with VFSFTP. When I went to events before I got my laptop, I used this setup to update my webpage with live information. I could also upload photos as such.
Ah, one more handy program, Mocha Telnet, it has SSH-2 support. I used it to ssh in to make thumbnails of the photos I'd uploaded.