What Is an AlphaSmart?

Sad News

Today we lost Leonard Nimoy. Lots of people will have wise or clever things to say about it, but I’ll just say it’s a tremendous loss but I’m grateful that we had him as long as we did. Also, blast it, why isn’t the crew of the Enterprise immortal? Someone get on that! And then make it retroactive.

In Not-News

Yesterday I mentioned my AlphaSmarts, and it occurred to me that not everyone would know what I was talking about. And if you’re a writer – you need to know.

This is one of my AlphaSmarts, surrounded by the other keyboards I use.

It’s a word processor. Yes, that’s pretty much all it is. It is not, as one reviewer put it, “one of those distractions-from-writing machines.” All it does is record your words (okay, and it has a calculator. Just try to put Candy Crush on it, though!)

AlphaSmarts are awesome. They last forever on a couple AA batteries.† Lighter than nearly any hardcover book, they go anywhere. They are darn near indestructible. Faithful readers are familiar with my daughter – it took her six months to damage hers. Absolutely nothing, including rocks, books, and fossilized Peeps, has before or since lasted six months in her backpack. Even then, the AlphaSmart wasn’t dead – just the screen was ruined by her putting her magnetic rocks on it and leaving them there. Still turned on and typed and downloaded.

Durable, portable, distraction-free writing that won’t die mid-chapter. See why I said writers need to know about this?

Yes, many typewriters could do the same. But then you have to type it all again, or mess with scanning and OCR. Not with the AlphaSmart. Open a document on your desktop or laptop, plug your AlphaSmart into your USB and hit Send, and the characters in your AlphaSmart appear in your document. (just don’t wander to other windows – the characters go in the active window, and if you wander off browsing… Just go get a drink of water instead. It doesn’t take long.)

They even do Dvorak! I would not have guessed that. Just be sure to change your input language on the accepting computer to QWERTY. Dvorak AlphaSmart to Dvorak computer comes out gibberish.

C odrgne jrboce.p dr, mgjd oyguu C dak. Yr ,pcy.v C ,aby yr ir yr Anaota abe b.k.p n.ak.v rtafw or ucn. rb. Co hgoy a xgbjd ru ocnncb.ooZ C odrgne jd.jt rb ucn. Y,rv C nrk. Ydco ydcbiw drnf odcyv orm.eaf orrb C odrgne jd.jt rb yd. Er,bnraecbi axcncyfv

The sad thing about these wonders is the company no longer makes them. Squeezed out by the endless supply of distract-me-from-writing machines, I’d guess, since they used to be the go-to machine in language arts classrooms, and now that’s the iPad. That’s why I have two – because sooner or later the supply will run out. You can still get AlphaSmarts used on eBay though, classroom veterans at $15-35 each (if it’s less than $15 read carefully to be sure you’re not buying one for parts).

If you want to know more, here’s a great post by another AlphaSmart admirer, and here’s a Flickr group dedicated to AlphaSmarts and the places they go.