Tools of the Trade

Today is going to be a big writing day for me. I’m determined to quit checking my email, stop checking the news, and shut down my laptop until dinnertime tonight. The web is such a time-waster for me.

Plus, I have a new tool for writing: an Alphasmart Neo.

It came in the mail this week, just before Dan went into the hospital. Yes, I took it with me, but I was too nervous to write. Today I think I can get back to business.

The Dana is basically nothing more than a word processor. It makes it easy to type and type and type — or rather, write and write and write — without distraction. It’s light, and portable, and runs for 700 hours on three AA batteries. At the end of each writing session, I simply plug it into my computer with a standard USB cable and upload the text into an open Word document for editing.

My new Neo is an upgrade from my Alphasmart 3000, which works the same way.

I wrote a lot of Tall Dark Stranger on the 3000. I still like it, but the keyboard isn’t as good as the Neo’s. Dan always complained about the plasticky "clackety clack" noise it made.

In the interim, I did try working with the Alphasmart Dana, but is was a little too sophisticated for me. It combines the Alphasmart word processor function with all of the features of a Palm Pilot with wireless Internet.

It sounds like fun, but I thought the Palm software was fussy, the battery life was short, and all in all

it was more of a sub-par laptop than a fun word processing tool.

I’ll probably give my old Dana to my sister. I’m sure she’ll enjoy it.

Can you tell I’m procrastinating? I’m going to shut down my laptop now. I mean it. Right after I post this entry and check my email one more time.