Max parks his hoverbike in front of his housing pod's acrylic dome; the artificial-intelligence sentry scans his retinas, then waves him inside. After switching on the hologram player, Max unloads his laptop, a US$200 tablet that weighs half a kilogram, contains no moving parts and can be dropped without damage. Its batteries are half depleted -- only 350 hours of power left. He points the machine at his home computer and presses the send button; the words he wrote on the road are silently beamed to the desktop machine, where they appear as though being typed by a secretary high on caffeine.
Of course, all of this is sci-fi nonsense -- except the part about the laptop.
The world is filled with fragile 3kg US$3,000 laptop computers with two-hour batteries.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
But not all laptop makers prize megahertz, screen resolution and memory above all other specs. A few tiny companies, turning those priorities inside out, are making portables of a completely different sort: cheap, simple, rugged, light, amazingly power-stingy word processors.
Now, these aren't traditional laptops by any stretch; they're more like glorified keyboards. In fact, you can use most of them as keyboards when you're not on the road.
Monochrome readout
Instead of a screen, you get a monochrome LCD readout that shows only four or eight lines of text at a time. It's not even backlighted; too bad for people struck by inspiration in the middle of the night. There is no trackpad (only cursor keys), no modem or expansion slots and only enough memory to hold about 100 pages of typing.
As for multimedia, you're lucky if the word even exists in the built-in spelling checker.
Still, for every person who uses a laptop for animated PowerPoint shows in meetings, there's another who doesn't do much more than type. Students, of course, are far and away the biggest consumers of these portable note-takers; for the price of a single real laptop, a school board can buy 10 of these smart keyboards.
Smart keyboards start up and shut off instantly, are apparently crash-proof, save your work automatically and preserve your files when the batteries are removed. Because there is no hard drive or other moving parts inside, these machines withstand youthful handling that would shatter a real laptop -- and its owner.
When compared with the Palm-and-folding-keyboard setup that is increasingly popular among journalists, writers and researchers, a smart keyboard offers considerable savings, more rugged construction, greater typing comfort and dramatically improved battery life. And beaming the resulting plain-text files to a Macintosh or PC by infrared or cable is simpler than a Palm synchronization; the smart keyboard pours your text directly into whatever document is on your computer's screen (Word, Note Pad, an e-mail program, whatever).
International frequent flyers, too, are discovering these products; one set of AA batteries could take you around the world for 80 days. One smart-keyboard owner told me how, on a transoceanic flight, a desperate seatmate with a dead ThinkPad battery offered to buy her smart keyboard on the spot for several times its price.
The best-known smart keyboard is the AlphaSmart 3000, a compact two-pound US$230 device created by a pair of former Apple engineers.
Sculptured curves
Its Macintosh heritage is obvious; its translucent dark blue sculptured curves make it look like an iMac's house pet.
On the AlphaSmart, you can't, or never have to, name or file your documents. In the name of idiotproof simplicity, its inventors have limited you to eight files, each no more than 12 pages long.
You open each by pressing a key on the top row; they're labeled File 1, File 2 and so on. Technophobes adore this one-key-per-file system; technophiles are likely to roll their eyes.
The AlphaSmart is the only model reviewed here that can accept files from your desktop computer for on-the-road editing, courtesy of a US$20 add-on program called Get.
Other exclusives include an optional Dvorak keyboard layout (the keys themselves easily pop off for rearrangement); the ability to download new programs like a typing tutor and quiz-taking program; and what the company says is 700 hours of battery life per set.
At first glance, Perfect Solutions' red or blue 2.75-pound Laser PC6 could be the AlphaSmart's beefier brother. Only these two laptops can generate accent marks, and only they offer properly descending g, j, p, q and y characters. (On the other machines reviewed here, these letters are squished into the space occupied by other lowercase letters and are distracting to read.)
The PC6 lets you create and name 45 documents, 100 pages in total. Its best feature is the 40/80 key, which switches to a smaller font; this eight-lines-per-screen mode brings you much closer to desktop word processing than the usual four-line mode.
The Laser PC6 comes with crude spreadsheet, database and scientific calculator programs; its cartridge slot accepts either a US$40 200-page memory module or a US$100 cartridge that reads back your text in a synthesized voice. Unfortunately, the operating system was not designed by the people at AlphaSmart, to put it mildly. You won't make it much further than the word processor without the manual.
The Laser PC6 is also pricey for its category: US$290, plus US$35 for the infrared receiver. Note, too, that the PC6 runs for 36 hours on a set of AA's.
At US$200 and just half a kilogram, the QuickPad is the price and weight leader. It also offers 400-hour battery life and password-protectable folders, which in school situations permit 10 students to share a single QuickPad. The contents of each folder appear with the press of an F key (F1, F2, and so on), with up to 25 documents stored in each. Short documents, that is: the QuickPad's capacity is 70 pages.
Unfortunately, the QuickPad has some rough edges. For example, you can't switch to another file, or even turn the machine off, without first pressing the Esc key to close the current file; by smart-keyboard standards, that's real complexity. The absent Cut, Copy and Paste commands are even more distressing; a word processor without Cut, Copy or Paste is like a Popsicle without a stick.
Seizing opportunities
Still, only QuickPad's maker has been smart enough to seize on the possibilities of this market niche; a Pro version with a bigger screen, organizer functions, e-mail software and a built-in modem is due in late summer.
You might call the peculiar but affable CalcuScribe a smart keyboard on the half shell; its hinged lid covers only part of the keyboard portion, leaving the tiny number keypad exposed. Still, it's nice to be able to choose your own angle for the screen, a luxury not afforded by its tablet-style rivals.
Only CalcuScribers can shoot files back and forth between their machines via infrared -- great for collaborating (or invisibly passing notes) in class. And the 1.5kg CalcuScribe offers find/replace and word count commands.
On the other hand, the Calcu-Scribe holds only 50 pages' worth of text -- not much, considering the high price: US$240 for the Uno model, US$280 for the Duo (a four- or eight-line screen, similar to the PC6), plus US$75 for the optional infrared receiver. (A transfer cable is included with the keyboard.)
Note, too, that the CalcuScribe's DOS-like menu system lets you create unlimited password-protected folders and files within them but also requires many more keystrokes (at least five, in fact) to find and open a file you've created. And while the Uno model gets a respectable 300 hours per set of AAs, the Duo model sleeps after only 50.
All these smart keyboards are available for free two-week trials. But beware: Once you've tried one -- especially the cool, collected AlphaSmart -- you may not feel like returning it. These strange devices, populating a rarefied product space somewhere between handheld devices and laptops, require about as much power and maintenance as a Frisbee. Having one around can change the rules of the game for anyone who has to write -- whether it's a book report, senior thesis or implausible science-fiction novel.
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