Write on!

I should remember to resume my search for the ideal portable writing hardware solution. I’m sitting at a Starbucks writing this on my notebook, but this notebook is far from portable. It still requires a bag to carry around, it’s heavy, and it’s not exactly something that you can carry around with you wherever you go and pull out when an idea crosses your mind. I do still want something with a keyboard, as close to full-sized as possible. I know that there are folding keyboards that you can hook up to a pocket PC. It’s the pocket PC that I ultimately wasn’t enamored of after an initial love affair with the idea. They were too clunky and unstable to blow a wad of cash on, and they tried to do too many things that I didn’t care about.

If it exists out there, what I’d like is a mobile phone, say a stripped-down smart phone without video and whatever bells and whistles they’ stuck into them. Just a regular phone, with SMS and whatever, with a word processor – plain text is just fine - that you can hook into a folding portable keyboard that you can stick in your pocket. So when inspiration strikes you, you pull your phone out, unfold your keyboard, sit down and type.

I’m almost certain that there is something like this out there, probably a smart phone with some basic Wordpad app in it, that hooks up to a Targus or whatever folding keyboard. Assuming it all works, I wonder how much that’ll set me back.

Time to go Google or browse Engadget. I’m close to having the full amount needed for a 40GB iPod, but I’ll happily blow it on this writing instrument.