A1

Well, I had bought a laptop a couple weekends ago as a way of maintaining some sanity when out at various functions where my whole job is to keep half an eye on one or the other of the kids, and to be ready to take them home (or buy them food). IOW, where I have multiple hours mainly dedicated to being ready in case they need me.

Unfortunately, as often happens in our household, one of the kids decided they REALLY needed MY laptop. This has happened to so many of my gadgets that you'd think I'd know better by now. However, I figured I could just get another inexpensive laptop and move on with my life.

Well, the Goodwill place I had bought the cheap laptop at now had none of them that were less than $300. Best Buy had a deal on a new laptop for about $400, but were sold out by the time I go there. And the idea of buying a PIII laptop for $100 less than a new laptop seemed somehow more outrageous than when I got the first one for just about $200.

So, after thinking about what I really planned on doing with the device, and after confirming that Cingular wireless is still a bunch of blood-sucking marketers who just happened to get a lot of folks dropped in their laps after AT&T Wireless folded - i.e. you can buy three times as much for a phone and twice as much a month to get the same thing you can get from Sprint, and since we still have a year left on our two year commitment we aren't going to be switching... - anyway, I decided that the device options for me were to go with a Creative Zen or a Sony PSP.

I liked the capacity of the Zen, but it has no internet capacity whatsoever, and the screen size is only somewhat larger than an old airmail stamp. The PSP with a two gig Memory Stick PRO Dual was the same price, and did give me some Internet capability and a MUCH larger screen.

So far, I have been quite happy with the decision, and so far have been able to beat back the kids who want to play with Dad's new toy. But I have to say that the biggest problem I have so far with the PSP is the lack of an add-on keyboard. There was some news a year ago about Level 3 creating a keyboard that would fold up and also protect the screen. But some more digging showed that in April they killed the project.

So, anyone know if Sony is going to come through with a keyboard? Or any way to hack one of the foldable PDA keyboards to be used by a PSP?