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."

You know

[Neil Blender]

There are cheap pdas. And you can buy keyboards for them. I doubt you will find anything much better than a pda.

Why Not A PDA?

[datastalker]

Travel Clock + KeyBoard + Memory + USB = PDA If you're worried about cost, a Zaurus SL-5000D or SL-5500 [ebay.com] can be gotten on eBay for a reasonable price. Of course, if you're not concerned about price, then the Treo 600 [handspring.com] would do what you need, and comes with a (albeit poor) camera.

Sony U70

[konfoo]

http://www.dynamism.com/u70/

Seems like just the ticket - but it may empty out your wallet considerably. I've used the U101 a lot when travelling for everything to photo editing, dv editing, notes, watching movies on 10 hour plane flights, or wifi net connectivity -- but the U70 (although the 800x600 screen seems too small for my liking) seems more flexible / portable.

Re:You know

[chimpo13]

That sounds like the best idea if you don't want paper. I looked into it too. Old PDA that runs off AA rechargebles and a fold-up keyboard.

Although after screwing with it, I figure a paper notebook would be better. I like having something to screw around with. Easy to flip through, insert stuff into and something permanent. Electronic copies just aren't as neat as paper.

When I type my travel reports, I'll be able to edit them down.

Bwah

[Anonymous Coward]

What you describe is a PDA or notebook, or some bastard version of the same.

Is this "I am bored so lets ask /. stupid questions"?

That said if you really want to get away from computers for your vacation, get a dictation recorder (not sure on proper english term). You know the devices people used to use to dictate letters etc for their secretaries to write up. Digital storage versions existed last time I checked. Take voice notes, then transcribe later. Maybe you could even hook it up with some speech recognition software.

digital camera - voice notes

[Anonymous Coward]

My canon a70 camera allows you to record voice notes along with a photo.

So you get
digital photos
+
voice recorder

One word . . .

[Goronguer]

Typewriter.

Seriously. Get an old mechanical typewriter. They have relatively small ones that come in their own briefcase-like case. I'm sure you can pick one up dirt-cheap at a thrift shop or antique store.

You'll feel really hip and literary typing up your travel notes on an actual typewriter. Then when you get back home, scan your typewritten pages into your computer with through an OCR program, clean it up a bit, and you're good to go.

Nokia Digital Pen

[Hektor_Troy]

The Nokia Digital Pen [nokia.com] could be the answer to your prayers.

It can store up 100 A5 pages...

I haven't tried it myself, but I would love to.

Logitech digipen

[Annirak]

Seriously... Dump the keyboard requirement and use the digital pen. It has built-in hadwriting recognition and will keep a memory of everything you write with it. It's not a computer--at least in the sense you meant--so it should fit the bill.

Most are missing the obvious answer...

[Not_Wiggins]

Why not get a voice-recorder that supports voice-to-text conversion?

Nothing simpler than just speaking your notes into a tiny electronic device, then have a speech-to-text converter "type" it into your favorite word processing program.

I use one from Olympus that has really good record time/battery life.

Re:A different option

[mokomull]

GET A 49G+!

Here's what it has that no TI has:

• Secure Digital memory slot: 64 megabytes of memory is only $30!
• Infrared (standard IrDA, except it only travels like 15cm at best)
• 75MHz ARM9 processor (yes, seventy-five megahertz!)

-MrM

CrossPad

[enigmae22]

Try out a crosspad, I bought one of these things about 4 years ago, and it was awesome, just a pad of paper, a pen (RF no less) and a clip-board type interface. Then you hook it up via serial port and use IBM's digital Ink program to convert your chicken scratches to e-text. It was a little expensive and mine is collecting dust now but it was essential when i was in college collecting notes etc... The one problem was that there wasn't an eraser, however this was offset by the ultra-cool pen, that takes a aaaa battery, i never knew they got that small. I would imagine you could pick one up off ebay for not too much money, or use the newer nokia pen thing, which i think is pretty slick, however it might have it's own issues.

Re:You know

[NanoGator]

"There are cheap pdas. And you can buy keyboards for them. I doubt you will find anything much better than a pda. "

Get one with a voice recorder then use the keyboard on your pc. And before everybody comes by saying "Why not use a tape recorder?", think about what a PITA it'd be to scroll around an audio tape instead of clicking on a filename.wav with a time and date stamp that can be renamed to anything you like.

TRS-80

[abrinton]

Sounds like what you need is a Trash-80 [the-gadgeteer.com]. It'll take notes and it's ancient enough that you really won't feel like your using a computer! Also, it's not flash enough to attract attention when travelling. A quick homemade serial interface when you get home and you're formatting in Word before you know it!!

MP3 or Voice Recorder and Dragon Speak Software

[nyc_paladin]

Why not get digital voice recorder or a MP3 Player that can record voice memos? Then transfer the recordings using dragon natural speak to convert it to a word document? If you already have an MP3 player see if it will allow you to record voice memos. Sounds easy to me and keeps your hands free during your trips.

Logitech IO Digital Pen

[sabNetwork]

I believe the Logitech io Digital Pen [logitech.com] is the only device that satisfies your requirements. I can't give you a recommendation because I haven't tried it myself. Epinions has a couple reviews [epinions.com] as does ZDNet [zdnet.co.uk]

It's about $160, plus the price of a compatible journal.

He said NO PDA

[Anonymous Coward]

I have long been looking for the same device that Anonymous Wanderer asks for, so it's really annoying to read people saying he's described a PDA/keyboard combo.

Have any of you ever tried to actually USE a PDA with one of those fold out keyboards? I have a setup like that, and it's great - as long as you have an ergonomically set-up desk and chair at just the right height, that is stationary. If anything moves, or is jogged, your PDA is likely to fall over, out of the cradle. You can't use it on your lap, or on an airplane (as the angle of the PDA hits the seat in front). A subnotebook is a MUCH better "travel" note device than a PDA/keyboard combo.

However, what we want is NOT a subnotebook. A useable subnotebook (even a very old one, if you want a working battery) will run you at LEAST $300, and more likely around $1,000. Battery life will hardly ever exceed 3-4 hours, and they are heavy and breakable, and are full of unwanted features!! (which incur the aforementioned battery and financial drain).

The ideal device would have the intelligence of something along the lines of a Palm III, and the body of an ultrathin/compact subnotebook. I think I would like a full 8"-10" greyscale screen, and the action could include a 'foldout-palm' style keyboard so that when closed, it could be more compact, and when open the keyboard could be fullsized. Battery life should at LEAST exceed 10 hours with these simple internals. It should be under $300

This device is very simple, I would imagine much demand among note-takers, writers, students etc. We don't NEED laptops for this! Executives of Slashdot, Create!

(P.S. the Alphasmart is almost there, if only it was more compact !! And it could be a lot cheaper)

386 laptop on ebay

[Darth Cider]

I have a friend who bought a 386 laptop on ebay for exactly your purposes. Cost about $25 and worked out wonderfully for her.

Depending on Size

[Jameth]

I have to plug the AlphaSmart 3000 here. I have one, and it is great. The only downside is that it isn't collapsible, so it's about 12x8 inches. If all you want to do is type, it will do that, as it has a keyboard. It holds a good amount of text (a bit over 80 pages at 80 chars wide).

The real advantage is that it gets at least 500 hours on three AA batteries. For me, that is a lifesaver, because I absolutely hate charging things and have a tendency to forget to do so (particularly while travelling).

Also handy, It can output over USB or a printer cable, and can send to any computer because it can emulate a USB keyboard and just type really frickin' fast.

I expect you want something smaller than that, as it is close to laptop size. It costs about 300 dollars, which is unfortunate.

Unfortunately, Motorola is refusing to release the specs on the chip, so you can't program your own applets for it. It's only ever good as a word-processor and a primitive calculator, but that's all many people need.

Also unfortunately, the company which makes them doesn't seem to want to make a smaller one, although it can't be too difficult. I've looking inside there: it has almost nothing in it. If they would make one with a smaller screen and a stowaway keyboard, I would be in heaven.

How about an old Newton eMate?

[Mr. Protocol]

The Newton eMate, (very) dead technology from Apple, is available for cheap on eBay. It's very rugged, having been designed for kids. It has a built-in keyboard and no disk drive (FLASH RAM instead). It runs for hours and hours on a charge. The LCD display is shock-mounted and highly readable in direct sunlight. It doesn't wash out, it just gets easier to read. There's a backlight too. And it's very light.

It's fun to use one of these on a long plane flight. After two hours, everyone else is either changing batteries or folding their laptops. After four hours, the battery-changers are folding up, and you're the only one still typing.

It doesn't have USB. Its only interface is serial. But the Palm Desktop software for the Mac, which is Claris Works in disguise, will export documents from the eMate either as ASCII text, or to Word.

Why not a hiptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not a Danger hiptop [danger.com]. It's a phone, PDA, HTML web browser, has AIM, does pop email (pushed down to you, you don't have to explicitly check emails) and includes a handy notes type program. You could also type notes into your e-mail or blog on the go. It has a full qwerty keyboard and the T-Mobile version (aka sidekick) is available for $70 (after rebates) from Amazon (if you get new service). Unlimited data access for $20 with any voice phone plan. There's even a telnet/SSH application you can snag for $10. The kicker is that the only way to backup your data is when it is automatically synced when connected to the GPRS network... so if you're not in or going to be in an area where T-Mobile (or whichever carrier you'd go with) has data coverage and the battery dies, then you're notes or email drafts will be history. But as long as your in a coverage area, it's great!

cheap?

[zogger]

What you want doesn't seem to exist. if you only want to drop a few dollars on something practical, especially for camping and for reading and writing, I'd suggest rethinking the notebook and pen, and for around 10-15$ you can get a headlight/flashlight thing that you slip on your head, they have LED bulbs, run for days on some AAA or AA batteries. Chinamart has several models on the rack, easy to find there or most other department store. I have two of them, great for working and keeping your hands free, comfortable enough to sit down and read books (or write in a journal) with if there's no other lighting available.

Really, the next best option is just get an real old cheap used laptop, like some old 50$ pentium one or something. Transfer every days notes to a floppy and snail-mail it to yourself with a postcard, daily, then you have a backup if the laptop borks on you. Just make sure it has a decent battery. Don't think of it as a computer, just call it a portable keyboard equipped electronic typewriter for taking notes that's a lot cheaper than the other one you looked at.

But I still like the headlamp/ dead trees storage combo as the cheapest and best. The headlamp will satisfy geek gadget urges and it actually is quite practical, and the dead trees notebook is cheap and effective.

Cross Pad

[VUSE g-EE-k]

See if you can find an old Cross Pad. I have had good luck with these pads in the past while taking notes in meetings. It is nice to have a digital and a paper copy. The handwriting recog. actually works too. They were discontinued in April 2001, so check ebay [ebay.com].

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:You know

[NanoGator]

"You'll need a monster pda to have enough memory to record your travel diary as .wav... (even at shitty 11khz 8bit mono so bad you can barely recognise your own voice)..."

You bring up a good point, but I don't think you meant to. Pocket PC's used compressed audio. I don't remember the data rate, but it's pretty darned low. And I have personally used a PocketPC this way so I can personally verify it works just fine.

So what's the good point you inadvertently brought up? Desktop PCs don't come with the codec, and the audio recordings don't automatically sync to the PC (?!) so you have to manually back them up. You can find the codec, and you can manually back it up, but I do want to stuff my foot in MS's ... for that little oversight.

These aren't "No!!! Don't do it!" reasons, but more like "pay attention or you could lose important stuff" reasons. If I got back into that type of work again, I'd still use a PocketPC for that purpose.

Why don't you take a Pen?

[flipo.org]

...at least some using Anoto Technology:
info here [mypen.co.uk]
some reviews here [trustedreviews.com]
and here [earthv.com]
and a open source blogging system that has support for anoto pens: http://handwritten.net/ [handwritten.net]

Re:A different option

[ob0101011101]

I used a Palm M515 and a keyboard to record a diary every night of a 12 week bicycle tour. Each night in the tent I would type in a new entry. The palm notepad app was a bit low-tech for this (limited ot 4k entries), so I'd download a better editor like SiEd. In addition to this I used GPilotS to extract the track-logs from a Garmin (ETrex Vista) GPS. So for each day of riding, I have a ~100m spacing bread-crumb trail of where we rode. I have used this setup on subsequent tours since, and will use it again next year for a similiar 2-month ride. I backed-up every night (onto a SD card), and charged every three or four days. The palm survived the camping and constant vibration flawlessly. I wouldn't consider doing it without a full-size keyboard. I did grafitti small changes (like my beer tasting list), but for the most part a keyboard is essential. When you get home, you can simply extract the journal back to plain-ascii files ready for markup to HTML, or however you want to present the stuff. My first travel diary (for 5 month trip) took me about a year of elapsed time to type back out.

Starbucks Nomeclameturista

[cgenman]

When I worked at Starbucks we had Tall, Grande, and Venti drinks. There used to be a Short, but after the Venti was added the Short had to be removed. People kept ordering "Medium," most of whom couldn't understand that they cannot order a medium in a 4 size index. Of course, with our smallest drink labeled a Tall the customers had constant questions when we would relay their order to other people, and we had to double-check with everyone who ordered a Tall that they wanted the smallest drink we served. Which in a way was a lie, as you can still order a short, if you want, it's just not on the menu anymore.