Asklemmy

Got an Alphasmart Neo, it's basically a keyboard with a big enough unlit screen with a printer port and computer port. The original Neo model was made around in 2004-2006 and was made by Apple employees with education and disability in mind.

For the longest time I wrote on laptops and tablets but the fragility, battery power and eye fatigue made them not as suitable for continuous writing. I had the money and saw others talk about the Alphasmart devices as being the best writing tool, so I got it.

It's been 2 1/2 years and the batteries I put in are at 60-56%. The device takes 3 aa for power and a coin cell (like for weight scales) for the memory. I can spend the odd multi-hour writing sessions without ever worrying about the device dying from lack of power. And it takes a lot of writing to get the aa batteries to run down a few percentages.

Features:

• Nearly indestructible exterior
• Turning it on/off and navigating between menus and screens takes seconds
• 8 file (tabs) buttons to keep 8 projects open at a time
• Each file autosaves and can save the projects into named files to keep it in the memory
• All or individual files allow for password protection
• Just words on the screen
• Has find, replace, word count, file storage %, wpm, dictionary, thesaurus and calculator
• Uses basic keyboard commands for text (Mac or windows keystrokes)
• Detects sections in the file by how many blank lines are inbetween (1-9 blanks and is set up by the user for how many blanks count as a section break)
• Change font sizes and 'mod' for custom fonts and set screen contrast
• Stop accidentally turning the device on by setting on to Enter + On
• Allows other keyboard layouts (QWERTY, Dvorak, right/left hand for disabled users) and special characters
• slow and sticky keys
• Allows Spanish writing and dictionary somehow

Most of the features I dont use but they are nice to have. The biggest plus is that it is not tied down to proprietary software or cables. It uses a printer cable (I have a regular one and a c-cable one for my phone/tablet) and all I need to do is select a file button, plug it in, get a blank document ready and hit the send button so it types everything out as a keyboard emulation. It is faster to get files with software but it is not a requirement.

Best device I spent my money on.