Ah the IPOD touch... so I was playing with the sucker today

[nadinbrzezinski]

at the mac store... and went, what if... I could use this sucker as a true replacement for my PDA? I mean wouldn't that be great? Take a book reader, a music player and a computer to do work.

Well I might do it, in the near future. You see one of the APPs is write room... distraction free writing... and lord knows it that I have the damn program on my Mac... and I love it.

So will do some more research, but I may actually join the IPOD revolution, and my pod is a nano and love it, but really cannot do that. Imagine writing on the fly... now if they make external keyboards it would be awesome.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. I am happy with my palm.

But Writting on the fly, I don't know.

Theya re awefully small and how do you get them to stop flapping their wings long enough to get any work done.

The problem will be the screen size. If it is much smaller than my palm, it is too small. In the workd of the Indian in Big Jake, "My eyes, no see so good."

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Screen size is not that much of an issue

after playing with the sucker.

The problem is sincying and as to screen size, about the same as a PALM or Windows based device

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Well found a really cheap 8 gig model

downloaded a couple writing apps, and I can say that yes, you can do some writing on the fly. The best part is... I can use it to email folks and take care of bidness that way.

Oh and I must say the writing apps in my CE device were far superior, but for some general word processing it is fine.

My major gripe, no tab... but as I said for general first drafts it is fine. And once you figure out how to mount it wirelessly to... in my case my MAC... it is just another drive. And given I don't do much music ... well I am set. This will last a good while. In fact, double the space my ipod nano has. Oh and that one still works, so I could always just load my music on that one...

Oh and the dictionary, got one that is not that fancy, is more than adequate. Will probably get a better one next month

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Some issues after working with it and yes got the first draft of the short fiction

for the mag today...

1.- Syncing is by app... which sucks.

2.- Copy and paste? I hope you are ready to do some retyping or find work around... rumored to be solved with release 3.0 of the software. Yep, my Jornada c 1988 was more capable in that sense... I mean I could do some ahem, basic formating with pocket word... alas they are now the game in town.

3.- Some good things: email on the fly... yep the story I finished on writeroom for the Ipod was sent to my computer. Now there were some issues that took a little while to correct with the email but hey.. what can I say? The other app I am using works better, and will probably do a combo of both... or perhaps not, After all writeroom has word count.

4.- Spelling... lets put it this way, other PDAs have been able to do spelling for ahem more than a decade. What passes for spelling on the Pod is far less than sufficient.

Now as a media device... works great. Being able to listen to music and write is nice. That said... battery life is a tad on the short side. I guess carry lappie and pod, and charge on the road... serious.

Now one of the note apps I found is great for short things, like oh character ideas, or news notes, or things like that.

So there you have it. If you are a serious writer, the Pod is a workable solution but Apple needs to get its act together. Some of us have been using PDAs like forever... and our expectations are a little higher than the young and hip users.

Oh and if you are a book reader... give Stanza (an app) a whirl... I just got a Norton novel on the machine, and getting her books is next to impossible. So now I can read one of her books.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Well after playing with the apps here are the ones I highly recommend

STANZA... that is a book reader... I have even got things like a copy of strunk and white... if you write, well you know this one is a must have for writers. And yes there are other writing books to get later...

I got a dictionary in there too.

Writechain... this little sucker is more of a motivational tool. Tell it you will write so many words a day... and it is kind of yep I did it.

Writeroom... if you have it in the mac, you know what I mean... good rtf tool and probably the easiest to use between the two machines, though I might have discovered how to do paste emails into my quickoffice.

But my current one to use is called notebook. It is a notebook... and boy I am using it to do things like get ideas down, that and paper. It also counts words, (the information icon on the left corner, by the bottom)... so yes you can use it to plot, and do first drafts. I would never try to write more than a chapter, but it is flexible enough that you could create your notebook for the novel, chapters, characters, notes. Not sure I'd recommend it, but hey, you could.

Realize people have gotten novels published that were written on a device like this. And lord knows I gotten stories published written in my IPAQ, but you get the picture. Oh and quickoffice is a descent word processor, just hope they enable copy and pasting soon.