Writing on the bus using a tablet.

I used to write thousands of words on my Psion 5. This was literally pocket sized and opened or closed with the rising and lowering of the lid. No lag time, which was great. The downside is that the keyboard is small and it's messy transfering your work from the Psion to a Word document.

I now use an Aspire One net book which works well on the bus. The trick, for me, is to make sure I have a bag with at least one solid side, so I have a firm work surface. It's not a perfect writing enviroment, but it is possible.

A tablet might well work, particularly if you download some sort of swipe keyboard which would speed up your input.

Really, I think it's about picking a method and sticking to it until you can do it easily and so produce some respectable work.

I was initially struck by your desire to write on the bus, thinking that a Sharpie was the best tool for low porosity, shiny surfaces, wondering that the best you could achieve with your typical tablet - probably running W8, which has a bad rap due to how hard they are pushing it and the negative reviews, would be shallow etching, especially with the trend to rounded corners these days - thankfully “shiny” and “rounded corners” are patented by Apple to hopefully keep the lawyers busy and the part-timers like Sony and Lenovo out of the picture, but after reading Eileen's Psion5 comment, and also StartPaging it, getting this video, I was then struck by the gigantic hands the speaker had, but after opening it up, and seeing the screen, I realised that it was a tiny unit from 2001; chuckling to myself on once again getting the wrong end of the shtick, I thought about our own success with The $2000 Sony Vaio Zee with Solid State drives (SSD,) which weighs a couple or three pounds, boots in 30 seconds, sleeps, then wakes in about 10 seconds, and gets 14 hours continuous battery time with the add-on virtually weightless $100 battery slice, which makes it especially important for tethering to an iPhone 4 for browsing and researching, as linking to the neural net to confirm synaptic thinking and historical facts are key to writing a good story - although many would disagree - but the best thing about the Sony Vaio Zee is it has sharp corners, making it rather Banksy-esque, and now I hit the sentence “wall,” like Wal-Mart – they sell walls there, right . . . oops, a bit more to add: the Sony Vaio Zee, ironically in this case, has no DVD drive inside to keep it as light as possible – it’s an add-on for $150.

hcass wrote: »

Another vote for a netbook, hmmmm. Thanks wavehopper And thanks for making me laugh Weebley. While advising me too.

Thanks, but . . . er, the name's Epstein, Brian Epstein. (Nope, it doesn't have the same ringtone to it as "the name's Weebley, Agent Weebley."); a 310 word sentence, which I think is my personal best (or longest, depending on your viewpoint,) also containing a similar and complementary hanging participle for alfa beta to pluck from if he so chooses.

Netbooks are done like dinner, like the Psion5 seems to be. Too bad. Nobody makes netbooks anymore. Poor screen size, I would say - 600 x 300 is not good for browsing, unless you like scrolling. Did you see the B&W graph on the Psion5 video? It was your typical "onwards and upwards" graph - that made me chuckle.

I would shy away from an iPad-ish thingy, as there is no tactile feedback, and my spelling misteaks are rampant when typing on the iPhone with that same keyboard, albeit not a gigantic keyboard. One handed typing would be a chore, really, I would think. And the screen does not tilt unless you get a leather sheath for it.

hcass wrote: »

Sorry Epstein. Is that "EpSTEEN" or "EpSTINE" - always wanted to know that...

That would be EpSTINE, hcass. By the way, one of us has just posted a new thread in Literature, here.

We will be discussing this last weekend's somewhat silent hullabaloo, elsewhere, this evening of the day.

Hi hcass,

Have you taken the tablet yet. . . the red tablet, or the blue tablet?

Or would you rather go to Legoland? NSFW (not safe for the world of Lego)

By the way, I was wondering why I was going on about the Sony Vaio Zee so much. Too much Zeal? Too much magnesium shell in my diet, maybe? (oops, they changed it to a carbon fibre shell. OK, too much carbon and fibre in my diet?)

Now I know.

I got an Asus Transformer. It's tablet with an optional keyboard dock that doubles as a secondary battery. It's fantastic because if I just want to browse on the couch I can hold it but if I'm on the train and want to write I can attach the keyboard and work away. Battery life is insanely great, too.