AlphaSmart and Palm was Re: Poor Steve is dead, poor Steve Jobs is dead...

I think the AlphaSmart Dana is the best Palm device I've ever owned. Even though the classic Palm Pilots are much more portable -- I got a lot of wear out of my Zire 72 and did not completely replace it until I finally got an iPhone 3GS (now I'm all Android) -- the Dana is still very easy to tote and just does everything I need out of a small laptop. EudoraWeb suffices for basic browsing, you can find the Dana web browser circulating on some sites that gives you a big wide full-screen browser, I have my own Gopher client written in Plua, and then of course all those Palm games and the outstanding AlphaSmart word processor. Just plug it into the G5 over USB and the Dana emulates a keyboard, spewing the document into whatever program on the Mac I want to use. Add a backlight and an easily serviced rechargeable battery (ahem, Apple) that has a bay for alkaline AAs in a pinch, and it is indeed the best Palm device I have ever owned. My mother was so impressed by this I got her one also, and it has nearly totally replaced her old laptop. She plugs it into her iMac after church and dumps the notes into Microsoft Word. I can't imagine they are difficult to work on. Every AlphaSmart I've met was so well-designed and refreshingly open and serviceable that I would find it hard to believe they could not be hacked and reprogrammed easily too. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Si des purgamentum, purgamentum accipietis. --------------------------------