Take Advice from the Experts...

At the first Northeast Bloggershoot, I was carrying my dad's Smith & Wesson model 39 - a single stack, all steel, first generation autoloader. It's a big, heavy gun, yet the holster my dad had for it (can't remember which one off the top of my head, sorry) made carrying it easy - it distributed the weight easily, tucked the large gun in tight so a light jacket covered it, and generally made carrying a large gun pretty darn easy. Further examination also revealed a small belt slide for his Sig P232 that made the little gun disappear under even a polo shirt and held it in place like it was glued. It struck me then: if you want a line on a quality holster for concealed carry, ask a cop who's done undercover or plainclothes work.

If you want to know what the best tools for any given job are, talk to someone who uses them day in and day out.

That's why, when Marko talked about the Alphasmart Dana being offered at a steal, I jumped at the chance to pick one up. I figured that Marko of all people would know the value of a dedicated writing machine, and his recommendation alone was enough to get me to part with the whopping $27 (including shipping) to get this little beauty:

Dana

The Dana arrived on my porch late last week, fortunately after I had cleared out from the latest round of SNOWMAGEDDON!!!1111 I don't even know what prompted me to go check out on the porch, but it was sitting there in the USPS box waiting for me. Opened it up, dropped three AA batteries in it, and I was off and running. I used it off and on all weekend long to work on the guts of my next Guns, Holsters, and Gear post, and found it to be an excellent tool for the budding writer.

The pros are many: It's lightweight - it tips the scales at a featherweight 2 pounds, less than even my Asus Eee. It's got a full sized keyboard with real keys, meaning no hunting and pecking for letters on teeny little keys. It runs on AA batteries, something that I as a dad have in my house almost literally by the bucketfull. And what some would consider a con - the lack of internet connectivity - is, for me, a pro; there are no other distractions on the Dana. No kicking over to check my e-mail. No chatting with friends on gchat. No hanging around in the forums. You start up the Dana, it's ready to write. And... well... write.

There are a few cons, to be sure - the software is Mac-based, and therefore not 100% compatible with Word 2007. Now, granted, this may be an artifact of this being a nine year old machine running nine year old software - and even at that, only minor formatting was needed to import into MS Word. The screen is small - only 9 lines of text - and can be hard to read in certain lighting situations (and the backlight is, well, um, there. Once you find out how to turn it on, that is).

But for what it is - a nine-year old word processor that I bought online for under thirty bucks - it's great. It's ready to go literally the instant you push the "on/off" button; it runs just about forever on three AA batteries; it's light and durable - I don't mind if my kids get ahold of it; and it allows for distraction-free writing in just about any situation. It's not a replacement for a full-blown word processing program nor a laptop with same; however that's not what it's meant to be.

And if I can figure out how to get my iTouch hooked up with it (there are hacks out there that use the Dana as a keyboard to an iPad), I will be an insanely happy person...

That is all.