Well I’ve gone and drunk the Kool-Aid.
I’ve ordered an AlphaSmart Dana wireless. I can’t wait for it to get here. When it does, I’ll take a picture to show you.
I know I said the fact it only lasted 24+ hours on a charge vs the 120 hours of the Alphasmart 2000 or the 700 hours of the Neo bugged me. What turned the tide is that I learned that if the charge poops out I can load in three AA batteries and it’s up and running again. The Dana runs Palm OS 4.1.2, which is an operating system that I know. I’ve owned Palm PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) for almost a decade now. If Windows could be as stable an operating system as Palm OS, I’d be positively giddy.
With all the nifty stuff that these AlphaSmarts do so well, I don’t know why they aren’t more popular. These are darn sweet little machines. They are handy, incredibly light (two pounds), and—quite literally—cool; it doesn’t try to set your lap on fire like a laptop will.
Nice bit of design. They must be good because they crop up on eBay so seldom. People are hanging on to them.
I fancy a Neo myself. But maybe a different colour – see http://www.vancefry.com/projects/red-neo
Like Henry Ford’s Model T, they are manufactured in only one color. How do you dye it? Is it like a paint.
I found a lot of the AlphaSmart 2000 and older models. Darn few of the Neos and Danas on eBay.
I think if you do find a Neo, you’ll be pleased. Minty could borrow it to take notes at school. It can go on trips with you and those notes, that might otherwise be scribbled on a napkin, could be typed and saved on the little beggar (almost said bugger but then I remembered that it means something VERY different in the UK)