What are your experinces with devices which are great for writing lots of stuff on... even a book? Laptop is not good because the battery does not last long, it's expensive, it does not fit in my pocket. kindle is small, battery lasts a long time, but the keyboard is so small. and it has no usb to plug in a large keyboard or a mouse. So is there a device which fits in a pocket and has a few usb ports for a mouse, keyboard... and it's own small keyboard.

The Eee PC, or one of the many other small form-factor laptops (also known as netbooks), seem to fit your description pretty well. They won't quite fit into your pocket (unless maybe you wear cargo pants or something) but I don't think you'll find a keyboard that's smaller and still confortable to actually use for long-ish periods... even netbook keyboards can be a bit cramped, in my opinion.

Yeah, a bit cramped, but still very usable. Fits in a bag, last 6, 7 hours, has internet connectivity and can do basic stuff very well (word processing, ect...). I do coding with Visual Studio on mine.

I have a Samsung NC10. The next generation of netbooks will come with the Ion / Ion2 platform, which is a intel N280, a 9400M, and a high definition 11.6 inch screen, so more like a small multimedia platform, that will be able to play games very competently as well. Probably at the expense of battery life however, which is one of the major selling point for me for netbooks.

Have a look at your local computer store, and see if the form factor can work for you.

My friend used a palm with vi for his notes. It didn't have a mouse(mousing with vi, blaspheme), but it did have a full size folding keyboard that would fit in a larger pocket, and it had a really good battery life. He would sync it with his computer every night and use his computer for doing most of his work. Of all the solutions, that seems to be the best solution for both portability and speed.

However, in any class where you've got to draw charts, there is still no solution that beats paper. The only thing close I've seen was a guy who used paint, a webcam and dreamweaver on his laptop.

Another vote for a netbook here. I'm using an EeePC 900 with a stripped down version of Ubuntu on it It works great. I have also installed the Awesome window manager and the Vimperator firefox plugin, which means that I don't need the mouse or touchpad at all. I can do everything with a keyboard.

There's always one of these. [wink]

Well, the most interesting technique would be a digital pen. That is a pen that you can use to write on any surface you want (and you can actually read what you write), but stores the moves into memory as well.

Go home, dock your pen, voila, OCR'ed text.

'course... the really easiest thing to go for would be pencil and paper. Write down in a paper notebook when you have creative ideas. When you have writers block, just tranfser notes from your notebook to your computer. Takes lot less creativity, you can do spellcheck and refine sentences, and recharge your creativity bone.

Thats what I do, at any rate :)

I use a netbook for writing. ASUS 900 (So wish I had spent the extra on a 901,...). Easy to type on, I get a few hours away from a wall socket, but generally use it near one anyway. I love it and works great for writing.

Other than that I tend to use either a high quality fountain pen with a narrow tip, or an Uniball gel pen, 0.5. Usually I just make quick notes and outlines by hand, often that "Just a quick one or two lines before I fall asleep, which turns into ten pages of notes."

I love my 8.9" Acer Aspire One A110 for taking notes in class. It's really small and light (950 grams), and it was only $200.

But I wouldn't get it just for typing stuff.

If you really want something that fits your pocket, then the Sony Vaio P has a better chance, but it's a little more expensive.

You could shop around for laptops or netbooks based on their battery size. Then you could buy 2 or 3 extra batteries, charge them all up and you would easily have 20+ hours of writing time before you have to recharge again.