Travel Writing Made Easier

By Russ Barnes
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 5, 2003; Page F07

The computer industry makes plenty of devices to let you work away from home, but hardly any of them fall between a laptop and a handheld organizer in size and capability.

Yet, not everybody needs or wants a full-fledged laptop on the road, with its cost, weight, limited battery life and complexity. Meanwhile, handhelds are too limited to let you write a letter and send it to somebody, at least not without buying a great deal of add-on hardware.

Two devices from a couple of unlikely suspects, however, suggest an in-between option. They're not for everyone, but they do point to some interesting alternatives to mobile computing as we know it.

Both the QuickPad Pro Mail (made by Mountain View, Calif.-based QuickPad Technologies) and Texas Instruments' TI-83 Plus Silver Edition (with an optional keyboard) feature full-size computer-style keyboards, weigh in at about two pounds, offer simple connections to a standard PC and operate for many hours on cheap AA batteries.

They hark back to the era of computing when performance was measured in kilobytes, not gigabytes -- in other words, few power users will be happy with them.

But somebody who just needs a cheap way to write might be content. They're simple to use and rugged, since they were designed for use in classrooms instead of offices.

The QuickPad Pro Mail, launched this spring for $349, comes in one piece -- 9 by 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick, weighing two pounds -- that contains a standard keyboard and a monochrome, non-backlighted LCD screen that spans just 18 lines high and 80 characters wide, matched to the width of the keyboard.

The most useful software on board is a bare-bones word processor, but the QuickPad also bundles rudimentary organizer, spreadsheet and calculator applications. The whole thing boots up to its icons-on-a-desktop interface in about four seconds; although it runs on a version of DOS, user input doesn't get more complicated than navigating with the arrow keys and typing one-letter commands.

The QuickPad's slate-gray case includes an array of connection options: USB and serial ports, a Compact Flash memory-card slot, an infrared data-exchange port and a phone jack for the internal modem. The QuickPad can connect to any standard Post Office Protocol account to send and receive e-mail -- but it can't read any attached files.

QuickPad Technologies, a relatively recent start-up, sells this device, with a few related models, to consumers only through its Web site (www.quickpad.com). Michael Spencer, the company's marketing vice president, said regular institutional sales to state governments provide sufficient income for future development.

Texas Instruments, a company without any name-recognition issues, took a different approach with its TI-83: It took a pocket-calculator design and added software and hardware to allow it to function as a basic note-taking machine. This $139 device remains on the hefty side, with a tiny black-and-white, non-backlighted screen (just 64 by 96 pixels); the $45 add-on keyboard makes typing possible and includes a nifty note-taking program called NoteFolio.

There's no provision for e-mail, however, and most of the rest of TI's software focuses on educational and science markets. The TI-83, as conceptually intriguing as it might be, doesn't measure up to the QuickPad as a writing tool.

Both of these devices fall well short of Palm and other handhelds in terms of screen quality and software support -- even if no Palm combines a full-size keyboard and modem in one unit as the QuickPad does.

There is, however, something to be said for a device built around long battery life, durability and a traditional keyboard. Millions of people once relied on a comparable device: It was called a typewriter.