[curtw]

Originally Posted by apestate

Lutraa that is great news about the kindle device! Thank you.

It's hard to believe manufacturer's specs when they are written with use-inside-civilization in mind. Little details emerge after accumulative moisture, condensation, and temperature swings are introduced.

I think that, for my upcoming trek, I will have to settle for a motorola droid xt from republic wireless. Text entry will be obnoxious, but it's better than taking pictures of notebook pages and uploading that to a blog!

Incidentally I found some more possibilities about using a keyboard in the back country:

nook simple touch in USB host mode - battery penalty of usb keyboard unknown
OLPC (one laptop per child) from ebay...

and this: http://www.8bit-micro.com/images/alphasmart3000.jpg

NEO, NEO2, Alphasmart portable word processor, weighs 2 lbs but are cheap on ebay.

The best combination of eInk and keyboard that won't make you pack too many batteries is going to be the K3. But the keyboard will be REALLY slow.

If you're open to a 2-lb word processor (with what? a 4-line screen that makes reading look like a real chore?), you might also want to check out an eMate 300. Definitely lighter than 2 lb. They're incredibly rugged, the screen is great for reading, and the keyboard is almost full-size. Should be under $20 on eBay. The only challenge is going to be swapping out the ancient battery pack. You can use AA's. I wanted mine to stay compatible with the built-in charging stystem, so I use NiMH. If you want to pack higher energy density in there, you can probably fit some expendable lithium camera batteries that will last a week.



P.S. for my Nexus 7, I use a Bluetooth keyboard that snaps right onto the screen when it's not being used, and would protect it in a backpack.


The keyboard's probably good for 30-40 hours on a charge, but good luck getting more than 6 out of the Nexus. You'll have to get a BioLite stove to charge it.