the writer’s best friend. (no, not bourbon.)

Imagine a laptop with the following features:

–A total weight of less than two pounds.

–A full-sized keyboard, as good as the best ones ever put on Powerbooks or Thinkpads.

–Flash-based operation, with no moving parts inside.

–Construction so rugged, you can drop it onto hardwood floor from a height of two feet without bad consequences.

–Battery life of seven hundred hours, on three standard AA cells available everywhere.

–Instant-on capability and zero boot time-just hit the “on” button and start typing. When you’re finished, hit the “off” button to shut down instantly.

–Instant saving of every letter as soon as you type it-no more lost documents.

–A price tag of $219.

Sounds too good to be true? Such a device does, in fact, exist, and I’m typing on it right now. It’s the Alphasmart Neo, and some of you will remember that I waxed about a newly-acquired one six months ago.

Well, I’ve been using the stuffing out of mine, so this is sort of a long-term review. In the last six months, I’ve written half of an 88,000-word novel on mine, as well as numerous articles, blog posts, and other scribblings. I’ve used the Neo every day, and it’s still on the first set of AA batteries I inserted when I took it out of the box. (In fact, my battery meter shows 94% remaining.) For all practical purposes, its field endurance is unlimited.

The three killer features of the Neo are its simplicity, its portability, and its near-absolute independence from a power source. It completely untethers the writer from the desk, and unlike a laptop, it doesn’t require you to take up station near an outlet. It’s so sturdy and lightweight that you can take it everywhere, and its instant-on system means that you have to waste no time waiting for your writing rig to boot or wake up from sleep. It remembers your last active file and the position of the cursor, so you just turn it on and start typing. It’s also completely silent, and emits no heat at all.

To be fair, the Neo has its drawbacks–that is, if you match it against a laptop and compare functionality. The Neo does text only–no Internet, no email, no games, no spreadsheets, only word processing. If you’re looking for a jack-of-all-trades mobile device, the Neo is not it. It’s a specialized appliance (one reviewer called it “Quaker computing”), and it’s really only good for one purpose–writing. It’s a one-trick pony, but it does that trick better than any other device out there.

Over the last decade, I used a succession of laptops for writing–with my preference mostly running towards PowerBooks–but one day I realized that writing was all I ever did with my laptop, and that the big screen, the large hard drive, and all the other assorted power-sucking bits and pieces were really not necessary for the job at hand. Over the years, I downgraded to successively less powerful hardware for word processing, and I found that not only did my productivity not suffer (you don’t need a ton of processing power to run Word), but the regression in technology actually increased my productivity, because it offered less distractions. There was no Internet to lure me away from my work with a “quick” Wikipedia lookup that results in a three-hour link safari. There was no email to answer, and no games, movies, or music.

Then, one day, I came across a review for this little writing tablet called the Alphasmart Neo. It was a little flash-based word processor designed for educational use (hence its sturdiness and specialized functionality), but the article said that the Neo had acquired a cult following among writers and journalists, who appreciated its unique set of writer-friendly properties.

When I had some spare toy money rolling around (and no guns to get out of layaway at that particular moment), I decided to see what all the hubbub was about, and order my own Neo from the manufacturer. On the day I decided to buy it, they had conveniently lowered the price from $249 to $219, so I took that as a good omen, and I called them and read off my credit card number.

I can honestly say that it’s been the best $219 I’ve ever spent. I’ve gotten much more use out of the Neo than any other computer or other electronic gadget I’ve ever bought, including stuff that was ten times more expensive. The ability to write anywhere at a second’s notice has completely transformed my writing habits, and increased my productivity threefold.

If your day involves writing in any capacity, and you have a spare two bills rolling around between the couch cushions, get yourself a Neo and try it out for a month. If you don’t like it, you can flip it on eBay quickly (Neos seem to sell for close to new purchase price whenever they do turn up on fleaBay), but I can almost guarantee that you won’t want to give it up again.

(Alphasmart also makes a model with a bigger and backlit screen, and built-in WiFi for those who absolutely must have some link to the Intarwebz while working, but all the added stuff drives the battery life down to thirty hours or so, and the purchase price up to north of $400, which is right up in low-end laptop territory. The Wi-Fi model runs PalmOS and is called the Alphasmart Dana.)

No, the company is not paying me to sing the praises of the Neo–I’m just a happy user, trying to get more converts for the cult. But just in case someone at Alphasmart is reading this, you may contact me per email to arrange sending me cash and/or swag. (I’m easily bought.)

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