HARDWARE
Whether bored silly in a bus station or wandering in a ketamine rush on Nevada's alkali flats, you'll find AlphaSmart 3000 a reliable writing partner. There's no color TFT display to suck down power, no fragile disk drive, and no moving parts except 80 sweet keys. It's simply a full-size keyboard and four-line LCD.
Built for the education market, the 2-pound AlphaSmart holds about 100 pages of text in eight hardwired files and lasts up to 400 hours on three AA batteries. When it's time to download the latest chapters of your searing desert epic, a built-in USB or serial port or an optional infrared interface does the trick. The device looks good, too: It has a swoopy green case by industrial designer Scott Summit.
And should you fumble AlphaSmart into a rocky ravine, don't sweat it - this laptop is hella cheap.
AlphaSmart 3000: $219. AlphaSmart: (888) 274 0680, www.alphasmart.com.
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