Pomera Portable Note-Taker

The Pomera DM10 tri-folding note-taker. Looks like it might be a neat competitor to the AlphaSmart Neo. It gets 20 hours of battery life on 2 AA batteries, has a microSD slot, and a 4-inch VGA display. When folded, it's only 1.18 inches thick and the size of a small book. It sells for $269. I've read several commenters sharing thoughts on the device. Almost universally, they say they'd much rather have a netbook for $300 and Internet access. I'm not sure I agree.

Readers of this blog will know that I bought an AlphaSmart Neo earlier this year for $219. It's some of the best money I've spent. The Neo is a no-frills word processor that gets ~ 700 hours of life on 3 AA batteries, instant on, and has an LCD display that can be used outdoors. I love it!

My Neo also has the ability to beam text to my Treo (and went for 6 months and still had 60% of the battery life left before I accidentally drained the batteries using it as an external keyboard).

The Pomera looks like it has many of the features of the Neo while giving up on several. Here's how I think it compares to the Neo.

Pros:

• Much easier to carry.
• Lighter weight.
• Micro-SD card slot.
• Larger screen (better for editing text).
  

Cons:

• Much less (1/35th) batter life.
• No IR beaming (how I beam files to my Treo).
• Less durable. (The Neo is built to endure daily use by school-age kids. I can't see the folding mechanism on the Pomera holding up to the same kind of abuse.)
  
• Not sure if the folding mechanism would prevent using it on a lap. (A real dealbuster. I used to have a Palm with a folding keyboard and the inability to use it when it was not on a flat surface really restricted its usefullness.)

An unknown is the keyboard quality of the Pomera. The Neo has one of the best keyboards I've ever typed on and just makes me want to write when I use it.

I would love to see more manufacturers entering this market and wish AlphaSmart would develop a smaller, lighter Neo with an SD slot and better file management system. I do like the notion of the increased portability of the Pomera and could see this being a contender as an invaluable note-taking device. It remains to be seen if it will gain the popularity the Neo has among writers.

As far as not being able to access e-mail or the Internet on a device like this? For someone looking for undistracted writing, that's not a bug, it's a feature!

(HT jkOnTheRun and Gizmodo)