I must be one of the few people who think the Freewrite is ugly. It doesn't have the streamlined good looks of the Alphasmart Neo or even better ones of the nice black Neo2. I have both Neos and find them extremely useful for writing away from the laptop, and I love watching them 'ghost type' into Word.
I hate the idea of having to back-up into the cloud and not being able to delete any files, not even the most inane notes. Apparently, with the Freewrite, you're stuck with everything you ever write on the thing. And just imagine going to a nice quiet spot and using that clacky mechanical keyboard. Mechanical keyboards are great, in their place, which may not be the public library, or beside a nice quiet river.
The only issue I've ever had with the Neo is that I miss my writing programs, especially those I use to plan and outline what I'm writing. For this reason I bought a small secondhand laptop. Because I, by choice, don't have wifi (the technician who fitted the router switched it off for me) it's hard for another laptop to log on to my internet (I use passworded homeplugs, or powerlines). So the second lappy is internetless unless I directly plug the router into it.
Anyway, I won't hog this thread with my lappy, especially as I booted the discussion of the Freewrite off the other thread
I'm sure others would say that if you're considering a Freewrite, take a look at the Neo first.