Will the Redfly benefit a writer? A real-world test

As a writer I am always looking for tools that let me practice my craft without having to carry such a wide range of bulky tools with me.  It is fortunate that as a writer the tools can be a lot more basic than those needed for a lot of other tasks that people use mobile gadgets for.  A good keyboard, screen, word processor and internet connection will pretty much do it as far as most writing projects are concerned.

Celio_redflySince spending a bit of time with the Celio CEO, Kirt Bailey, and seeing first-hand what their Redfly device can do, I have been giving a lot of thought as to how the Redfly could be a great tool for the writer.  The Redfly basically is just a screen and keyboard in a mini-laptop form that can connect to a Windows Mobile smartphone.  The Redfly has no storage, memory nor processor, it uses the phone for all of that.  It simply adds a bigger keyboard and screen to make interacting with the Windows Moble device easier to do.  It seems to me that this could be a perfect solution for the writer, allowing him/ her to carry just the phone and the Redfly which is smaller than the Asus EEE PC.

While giving this a lot of thought I realized that I had a pretty good setup to test this with the HTC Advantage.  I often use the Advantage, a Windows Mobile 6 running device, with the Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard, and HTC has also included a VGA monitor dongle to connect a PC screen to the Advantage.  I figured that I could do a test using the Advantage, the wireless keyboard and a PC monitor to duplicate the functionality of the Redfly.  This wouldn’t be anywhere near as elegant as the Redfly solution since it is a self-contained device with both the screen and keyboard but it would give me a feel for what it would be like to work on the Advantage with a bigger keyboard and screen.  So that is what I did and this article is the result.  It was created solely on the Advantage running with an external keyboard and display.

Cimg0369

Word Mobile on the big screen

I just noticed that Jenn of Pocketables posted a tutorial for connecting a monitor to the Advantage, good timing.  :)  Note that in the photos I have included in this article that I am using a 19 inch monitor displaying a VGA screen so of course everything looks large and garish.  This won’t be the case with the Redfly as that screen looks to be a little less than 7 inches which should display VGA pretty well.  What we’ll have to wait until the Redfly is released to see is how big that keyboard is.  It looked about the same size of the keyboard on the EEE PC which is right on the edge of usability for touch typing.  I’m thinking the Redfly keyboard will work but we’ll see.

The end result of this test proves to me that the concept of the Redfly as a phone extender could be very beneficial to those who do a lot of writing or document work.  Road warriors who work with a lot of email could also find the Redfly to be pretty darn useful without taking up much room in the travel kit.  I found in my test that Windows Mobile worked well with a larger screen and I had no issues at all.  I can’t wait to get my hands on a Redfly to really test this out.  It could be the ultimate in portability for the type of work that I do.

Cimg0372

Working with email

Cimg0374

Web work is a breeze

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post