In praise of useful electronics.
Sep. 30th, 2009 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseHurrah for the Dana again. I got a significant chunk of Bird of Dusk threaded together; the stuff I wrote just a few weeks ago, plus all the connective tissue. The Dana isn't usually good for editing or moving around a lot in text, but as ever, in spite of having the original draft of said scene on hand, I ended up doing the connecting scene by typing in almost 100% new stuff.
On the bus. In bus stops. And briefly, while waiting for my food pick-up order to be ready.
I Heart my Dana.
For those who don't know, a Dana is an AlphaSmart system; a keyboard close to full size, a touchscreen large enough to hold about ten lines of plain text and a command bar activated entirely by touch. It gnerally includes a lot of the features from things like palm-pilots, plus a word processor. Danas also include wireless capabilities, which I've never actually used, but I presume are also on the level of palms and blackberries and the like*.
They were originally designed for students with developmental disabilities that mean typing is easier than text. However, the fact that they are smaller than most laptops, sturdier than most laptops (Having been designed for people who are more likely to drop electronics) and have an 18 hour rechargeable internal battery that can be swapped with ordinary AAs (Including letting you load the AAs before disconnecting the internal), and can take memory cards makes them really good for your average writer or student, too. (And they sync files with your computer. The Dana version trumps the computer version - but it knows enough to shunt the old file on the computer into a slightly renamed version, not wipe it, just in case. It just means that to get the newest version of a file *onto* the Dana, you have to do extra work.)
The disadvantages I've found so far:
The touch screen abilities don't always perfectly make up for the lack of a mouse or certain commands (I don't know how to do Control-End or Control-Home, for example. They have keys for F1-F8, but I never learned the F key commands.)
In a bouncy car ride (Ie, bad shocks or a rough highway), the keypad sometimes misses strokes. I can't help but think this has to be a problem with at least some laptops, too. But the results are entertaining, as three disparate words become a wriggle with no spaces.
The internal light for the screen eats the battery power way faster, so in the car, I have to stop working when the sunset turns to actual twilight.
If the battery runs out, it loses *everything* internal. Thus the permanently designated Memory card. And the occasional paranoid watching of the battery indicator. And again, 18 hours of working time first. I've never yet run the battery out enough to need the AAs, though I always have them.
It's bad for editing. Between the lack of mouseability and the tiny screen and the fact that typos aren't as obvious, it's much better for first drafts. But then, it makes up for it by going everywhere without running out the way a laptop will.
Still, having a Dana in combination with a solid home computer for the editing and clean-up means more ability to work in more places. And I'm faster and more comfortable than I am with a paper notebook. Though I've used those too, they have an obvious disadvantage when it comes to long ongoing projects, and the need to retype everything. I do prefer being able to just link files back together.
_______________________
Note to self: Heather Dale is good archery music. It definitely helped me concentrate. Except for "the Holly and the Ivy".
*I look at the last clause of this sentence and wonder again at the shift in language.
On the bus. In bus stops. And briefly, while waiting for my food pick-up order to be ready.
I Heart my Dana.
For those who don't know, a Dana is an AlphaSmart system; a keyboard close to full size, a touchscreen large enough to hold about ten lines of plain text and a command bar activated entirely by touch. It gnerally includes a lot of the features from things like palm-pilots, plus a word processor. Danas also include wireless capabilities, which I've never actually used, but I presume are also on the level of palms and blackberries and the like*.
They were originally designed for students with developmental disabilities that mean typing is easier than text. However, the fact that they are smaller than most laptops, sturdier than most laptops (Having been designed for people who are more likely to drop electronics) and have an 18 hour rechargeable internal battery that can be swapped with ordinary AAs (Including letting you load the AAs before disconnecting the internal), and can take memory cards makes them really good for your average writer or student, too. (And they sync files with your computer. The Dana version trumps the computer version - but it knows enough to shunt the old file on the computer into a slightly renamed version, not wipe it, just in case. It just means that to get the newest version of a file *onto* the Dana, you have to do extra work.)
The disadvantages I've found so far:
The touch screen abilities don't always perfectly make up for the lack of a mouse or certain commands (I don't know how to do Control-End or Control-Home, for example. They have keys for F1-F8, but I never learned the F key commands.)
In a bouncy car ride (Ie, bad shocks or a rough highway), the keypad sometimes misses strokes. I can't help but think this has to be a problem with at least some laptops, too. But the results are entertaining, as three disparate words become a wriggle with no spaces.
The internal light for the screen eats the battery power way faster, so in the car, I have to stop working when the sunset turns to actual twilight.
If the battery runs out, it loses *everything* internal. Thus the permanently designated Memory card. And the occasional paranoid watching of the battery indicator. And again, 18 hours of working time first. I've never yet run the battery out enough to need the AAs, though I always have them.
It's bad for editing. Between the lack of mouseability and the tiny screen and the fact that typos aren't as obvious, it's much better for first drafts. But then, it makes up for it by going everywhere without running out the way a laptop will.
Still, having a Dana in combination with a solid home computer for the editing and clean-up means more ability to work in more places. And I'm faster and more comfortable than I am with a paper notebook. Though I've used those too, they have an obvious disadvantage when it comes to long ongoing projects, and the need to retype everything. I do prefer being able to just link files back together.
_______________________
Note to self: Heather Dale is good archery music. It definitely helped me concentrate. Except for "the Holly and the Ivy".
*I look at the last clause of this sentence and wonder again at the shift in language.
