I have a notebook computer for work. It has an Verizon Air Card because I travel and work as a contract engineer, and sometimes want to send and receive files or look up specifications on line. Of course the notebook will do anything you want on the internet, but it, by its nature and design, looks like and is used for a
productivity machine.
I also use the notebook to write my own personal stuff when I have
spare time while on a road trip. If I am at a motel at night I pull out a wireless mouse, a wireless keyboard and a folding stand, and I quickly have a "desktop workstation."
I have several other devices, a Kindle 3G with its very minimal Internet capability that is loaded with reference materials and classics, a Garmin GPS that I carry everywhere (in the backpack with the notebook) because the rental car might not have one that is up to date and that I like. I did use the Archos 43 WiFi on vacation when I wasn't carrying my work notebook. I also had an old laptop (no air card, but with WiFi) on vacation for night time. Something that I didn't have to worry about being stolen or broken.
But, No Smartphone! I have only a prepaid phone account with a refurbished LG clam shell feature phone in a holster pack on my belt, which was purchased in particular because it has a full-duplex speaker phone. I find that full duplex incredibly important for conducting business or tests over the speaker phone. I do not miss any words or sentences because they are talked over. (The other person, if on their Smartphone speaker might, but not me.) The LG does have a 1.3MP camera which at times is useful. It will play music, but has none loaded on it. It has a 8GB micro SD card but that is loaded with technical stuff for backup.
My email will wait until I am back on the notebook, unless someone calls me and says "Hey we just emailed the update, and also dropped it into your vault on the site."
With that in mind, it was refreshing to see other like minded writers thinking along the same lines
A Smartphone Future? But Not Yet
By TEDDY WAYNE
Published: March 23, 2012
excerpts -
"Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” argues in the book that because of the brain’s neuroplasticity, Web surfing rewires people to be more adept at perfunctory multitasking, but diminishes the ability to sustain focus and think interpretatively.
He has found an acolyte in the writer Jonathan Safran Foer, who jettisoned his smartphone after reading “The Shallows” and “finding myself checking my phone while giving my kids a bath,” he wrote in an e-mail from his computer. “It can be nice to stay in touch, but smartphones necessarily redefine ‘being in touch’ to mean something that has almost no value. (What was I checking for? Tossed-off e-mails from people I barely know.)”
Has Mr. Foer noticed a change in his attentiveness when writing? “Without a doubt and dramatically,” he wrote."
more-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/fa....html?_r=1&hpw