Alphasmart Dana Wireless

If all you need a notebook for is word processing and email, then it's probably overkill to spend a lot of money. An alternative to a notebook is a product like the Dana Wireless from Alphasmart, which fills in the gap between notebooks and traditional PDAs.

The Dana is based on Palm OS 4, which limits its multimedia aspects but has low system requirements and the long battery life this confers. Its keyboard dominates the PDA and the screen is angled slightly to give a better view. This runs at a resolution of 560 x 160 and is 3.5 times the width of a traditional Palm device, but much thinner.

To make use of the extra width, software needs to be rewritten or the screen defaults to the standard width with the Graffiti pad on the right. The screen is what you would expect from a monochrome Palm: at the correct angle it is easy to read, but the lack of a backlight means that finding that angle in less than perfect light conditions is a lot more difficult.

The keyboard is worthy of note, not just because of its usefulness, but also for its quality. It is very comfortable to type on with better travel than many laptops. The only drawback is that many Palm applications are not designed to take account of a keyboard, making the stylus essential at certain times.

Aside from built-in Wifi, the Dana also has infra-red, USB and two SD (Secure Digital) card slots. The wireless element of the Dana takes it into another dimension, as it becomes the perfect laptop replacement for email and web on a wireless network or hotspot. With its excellent keyboard, this is a very attractive subnotebook device with the only downside being the cost, which, at £363, seems a little high.

Contact: Alphasmart 0800 138 1492
www.alphasmart.com

Specifications:

• Palm OS 4
• Dragonball 16MHz
• 16MB Ram
• 2 x SD cards
• USB
• Infra-red
• Danaweb browser, Mark/Space email client, Dataviz Documents To Go 6.0 Professional Edition, Adobe Reader, Alphaword
• USB connection to PC