The Perfect Writer’s Laptop (Again)

Those of you who know me know this is a perennial blog for me. Especially now, that I am most of the time confined to bed except for the occasional jaunt to the infusion center for applied poisons, which for some odd reason is actually an accepted and normal part of the general insanity of these times.

The perfect writer’s laptop is one where the keyboard is perfect, with properly sized, properly spaced keys which have an excellent feel to them. You know what I mean. Some desktop keyboards are excellent for writing, giving positive response with each keystroke. Such keyboards are rare on most laptops, except for a few IBMs and of course, those Apples.

A ‘perfect’ writer’s computer for me would NOT be one of those blasted poorly designed and computationally hobbled NEC clamshell Windows CE driven palmtops. You have seen them. Full sized keyboard and half-high monitor, with static memory and no hard drive. Too bad they cost two grand.

Or the other end of this portable computer thingy is the AlphaSmart Neo or Dana, which is another full sized keyboard and a ridiculous little display that shows only a few crude lines of text in a mono screen. However, it is only a few hundred bucks, but it only runs Palm software. Another also ran in the perfect writer’s computer category.

You see where this is going, of course. Why not a Laptop computer? Why not an iBook or a PowerBook? Well, I have an iBook. Great little device. Too heavy. Too hot on my lap. Not enough battery life. Too many unnecessary features, too expensive. (Sorry, Apple. i only use it at my desk, and leave it plugged in.)

Actually, the perfect computer for a writer is one that a person can write on, anywhere. It doesn’t need OS X, as wonderful as that OS is (Can’t wait for Tiger, BTW).

What the perfect writer’s computer needs is sort of a scaled down laptop, with fewer features, bells and whistles. Just the writing software, and perhaps a minimal browser for checking email or finding a link to a reference.

It doesn’t even need to have a color monitor, as long as the screen is big enough with a fine enough resolution to read text.

As far as that keyboard is concerned, the perfect writer’s computer would have all those extra function keys around the return, space and shift key somewhere else. Those function keys are always kludging up your writing with unexpected dialog boxes popping up when you accidently hit one of them. That’s no way to get work done.

Yeah, if I were an expert touch typist, I would never accidently hit one of those function keys. But even so, all laptops make compromises to include all those extra keys on your keyboard so that you have access to them. But for a writer, all he needs are the keys to allow him to write. Look at some old manual typewriter sometime, to see what I mean.

So why not an older Mac Laptop? Those Wallstreets are legendary, after all. For the same reason an iBook does not work. Too big. Too hot. Too little battery life, etc.

Does anyone think Apple is listening?

Does anyone think that perhaps Apple is going to come out with one of these in the forseeable future?

Yeah. Me. Deluded optimist, me.

After all, who would have ever thought Apple would come out with the Mini, besides me and a few others?

OK. Now everyone is welcome to dump on the blog here. I will enjoy reading them.

Regards,
Roger

.