tsmpaul
Hand-painted Alphasmart Dana Word Processor
The default colour is PURPLE. Why? I don't know. But many people paint their Alphasmart devices, so I thought I'd give it a go with my Dana.
So, for $25 - $40 and postage, instead of buying a laptop, you can get an Alphasmart Dana or Neo or Neo 2 used on Ebay.
Alphasmarts are basically a portable, battery operated word processor.
The Dana has a larger screen, and runs on the old Palm OS, which means it can run a number of basic apps. However, you'd only really use any of the Alphasmarts for word processing these days.
It gives you room for approximately 80,000 words in memory, I think, and you can simultaneously have 8 documents open, toggling between them with the F1 to F8 keys. The Dana allows two 1 GB SD cards to insert in the back, so you can save your files - because whenever the battery goes completely flat, all in-system memory in cleared.
The Dana gives you 25 typing hours of battery life, with rechargeable batteries. So, not 25 hours lying around, but actual typing on the screen.
The screen isn't the greatest when indoors - it's an old type of screen, like that found in pocket calculators. The Neo 2 is easier to read, because the Dana has a touch-screen panel in front of the text screen, which makes it a bit glary and shiny, and the text is a bit muted.
The fantastic thing about the screen, though, is that in bright lighting or when outdoors, the screen is very, very readable. On a sunny day, the screen is very crisp and the text is fantastic! Compare that to my Ipad or gloss-screen laptop, where it's hard to even make out the screen on a sunny day, let alone read the text...
The Neo 2 which I am getting next, has a much smaller screen, no SD cards, and doesn't have the touch-screen Palm OS, but the text is easier to read when indoors compared with the Dana. In return, the Neo 2 Alphasmart can run for 700 hours on just 3 x AA batteries.
Yes, that's right: 700 hours of use! That's 70 x longer than a typical Ipad before needing the batteries to be changed.
Of course, all it does is word processing - but for writers, journallers, and so forth, it is rugged, super cheap, forget-about-having-to-check-battery-level-for-months, and so on.
To transfer your typing to a computer, you just plug the Dana or Neo 2 into the PC or Mac using a USB cable. Open a word processing program like Notepad or Microsoft Word on the PC, and press Send on the Dana / Neo 2.
The Alphasmart device will then 'auto type' your document from your Alphasmart onto the page on your computer, transferring it. It's kind of like printing out a document, but text is being sent to your word processor's page on your computer screen.
You can even plug it into an Ipad, and Send the text of your documents into any text IOS apps: just get the Camera Adapter for the Ipad, and instead of plugging a camera USB cable into the adapter, plug an unpowered USB Hub into it. Then plug your DANA or NEO into the USB Hub, and it is detected as an external keyboard! Now if you bring up something like Notes on the Ipad, and click Send, it will type your Alphasmart document onto your IOS device for you!
This is neat, because if you use auto-replacement features in programs like Word, you can set up auto-formatting, corrections, and so forth, as the transfer takes place onto your computer.
While writing, I typically transfer pages into Word, save it as a DocX file, then use Calibre to convert it to a Mobi, and I can put it onto my Kindle. Then I have all my current material, plotting, character design, planning notes, etc, referrable on my Kindle, while I continue writing on the Alphasmart.
Hand-painted Alphasmart Dana Word Processor
The default colour is PURPLE. Why? I don't know. But many people paint their Alphasmart devices, so I thought I'd give it a go with my Dana.
So, for $25 - $40 and postage, instead of buying a laptop, you can get an Alphasmart Dana or Neo or Neo 2 used on Ebay.
Alphasmarts are basically a portable, battery operated word processor.
The Dana has a larger screen, and runs on the old Palm OS, which means it can run a number of basic apps. However, you'd only really use any of the Alphasmarts for word processing these days.
It gives you room for approximately 80,000 words in memory, I think, and you can simultaneously have 8 documents open, toggling between them with the F1 to F8 keys. The Dana allows two 1 GB SD cards to insert in the back, so you can save your files - because whenever the battery goes completely flat, all in-system memory in cleared.
The Dana gives you 25 typing hours of battery life, with rechargeable batteries. So, not 25 hours lying around, but actual typing on the screen.
The screen isn't the greatest when indoors - it's an old type of screen, like that found in pocket calculators. The Neo 2 is easier to read, because the Dana has a touch-screen panel in front of the text screen, which makes it a bit glary and shiny, and the text is a bit muted.
The fantastic thing about the screen, though, is that in bright lighting or when outdoors, the screen is very, very readable. On a sunny day, the screen is very crisp and the text is fantastic! Compare that to my Ipad or gloss-screen laptop, where it's hard to even make out the screen on a sunny day, let alone read the text...
The Neo 2 which I am getting next, has a much smaller screen, no SD cards, and doesn't have the touch-screen Palm OS, but the text is easier to read when indoors compared with the Dana. In return, the Neo 2 Alphasmart can run for 700 hours on just 3 x AA batteries.
Yes, that's right: 700 hours of use! That's 70 x longer than a typical Ipad before needing the batteries to be changed.
Of course, all it does is word processing - but for writers, journallers, and so forth, it is rugged, super cheap, forget-about-having-to-check-battery-level-for-months, and so on.
To transfer your typing to a computer, you just plug the Dana or Neo 2 into the PC or Mac using a USB cable. Open a word processing program like Notepad or Microsoft Word on the PC, and press Send on the Dana / Neo 2.
The Alphasmart device will then 'auto type' your document from your Alphasmart onto the page on your computer, transferring it. It's kind of like printing out a document, but text is being sent to your word processor's page on your computer screen.
You can even plug it into an Ipad, and Send the text of your documents into any text IOS apps: just get the Camera Adapter for the Ipad, and instead of plugging a camera USB cable into the adapter, plug an unpowered USB Hub into it. Then plug your DANA or NEO into the USB Hub, and it is detected as an external keyboard! Now if you bring up something like Notes on the Ipad, and click Send, it will type your Alphasmart document onto your IOS device for you!
This is neat, because if you use auto-replacement features in programs like Word, you can set up auto-formatting, corrections, and so forth, as the transfer takes place onto your computer.
While writing, I typically transfer pages into Word, save it as a DocX file, then use Calibre to convert it to a Mobi, and I can put it onto my Kindle. Then I have all my current material, plotting, character design, planning notes, etc, referrable on my Kindle, while I continue writing on the Alphasmart.