Hello, lucid friends!
I wanted to recommend a nifty gadget that has given me a unique solution for dream diary challenges.
It’s called a QuickPAD. It’s essentially a portable keyboard with onboard memory for storing text in files. It’s lightweight and easy to use.
You can keep it by the bed, wake up, type your dreams, then carry the keyboard later to your computer and transfer the text into any program (word processor, dream diary, etc.) using an infra-red or USB port.
It’s a handy solution to not having a computer in the bedroom and not wanting to write longhand or dictate notes into a recorder. 
The basic product is US $200 – a bit pricey but a great alternative to a laptop.
Their Web site is www.quickpad.com. And I don’t work for QuickPAD … I’m just a satisfied customer.
Argh for $200 I could buy me an old pentium laptop and be done with it anyway… but I guess the quickpad is lightweight. Does it at least have a little LCD so you can catch mistakes? (sorry too lazy to look)
Looks pretty useful. I stopped using my laptop as a dream diary for several reasons. Firstly, I had to either sleep with the noisy device right next to my bed, or wait for it to boot at 5am while clinging to the memories I intend to record. Also, the screen doesn’t have a hardware brightness control, so the display would literally burn the dream fragments from my head as I strained to adjust my eyes. Lastly, having to maneuver myself to into a suitable position to use a keyboard is a lot of effort, and half-assed typing is often harder to read than partly unconscious handwriting. Especially when I discover the entire entry was written with my hands shifted left or right to the wrong keys. Ultimately too much trouble for the benefits.
This, however, looks like a novel solution. Lightweight, quick to turn on, and easy to see without melting your brain. Here’s a picture of one of the models if you’re too lazy (or bandwidth-challenged) to load the main site.
A little expensive for me at the moment (given that I’m in the process of finalizing a very significant purchase), but a great suggestion nonetheless.
It’s insanely lightweight – way lighter than they can make any laptop. Plus, it runs on AA batteries for a LONG time.
It does have a four-line LCD screen so you can see what you’re typing.
I’m getting one of these…not just for the dream journal but seems like a good all around writing tool.
BTW - they are going for half price on ebay, though I wonder if the offer is too good to be true…
I have an old compaq 486 laptop which boots in less than 10 seconds (i boot to DOS)… I usually just use the edit porgram but lately I’ve been wondering if there are better Dos progs out there that can do better (searchable, etc)…
The good thing about my laptop: when I can’t sleep I can play all the oldies and feel like I’m six again hehehe All games are now free, most programs as well…
I can safely say passing time is my friend when it comes to my old laptop
of course, I also have a fast computer (what, you thought I’d be posting from a 2200 baud ?) but nowadays computers are extremely noisy… the cpu’s are getting bigger and the fans are spinning faster… oh well.
but yeah, I got my laptop from a garbage bin at my dad’s work… you can probably find something like that in a second hand computer store or something.
