[clug] Modern palmtop

[Hal Ashburner]

If you're going to go down this road of using an electronic device where 
there is no electricity to take presumably extremely important notes how 
you're going to deal with it /when/ it fails and the flash memory is 
unrecoverable.
Without backups it might be tempting fate. A decent exercise book and a 
pen might similarly be a single point of failure however that failure is 
probably less likely. You can back it up with a digital camera. The 
extra work of transposing hand written notes later is less painful than 
losing the notes, I'd imagine.

A proper backup routine using multiple micro SD cards might be one 
decent approach to confirm works well prior to setting out if the 
smartphone is the option. Convincing people their hardware will fail and 
they need to back up  every week without fail is something I've usually 
found challenging.

If you're going to get an n770,800,810,900 for the job, a powered usb 
keyboard will also work. The 770 gets about 10 hours battery life with 
wireless switched off. I'm not sure how having bluetooth switched on 
affects things.
staticice suggests you can order an n900 for around the A$800 mark. 
Bluetooth keyboard is around the $100 mark last I looked.

A symbian phone like the 6760 can be about half the price of the n900 if 
the budget is tight.

Wish him the best of luck with his research from all of us.
Hal