Book published that was written entirely on PDA-phone: Harry Potter and Torah

I've just published a 200-page book, Harry Potter and Torah, whose first complete draft was written completely on my old PDA-phone, the Nokia 9110 Communicator. Once the text was entered on the Nokia Communicator, I moved it all to a computer to merge and format. Almost all of the text was written on inter-city busses or in libraries where I was doing research.

To me this shows the power of a PDA-phone that has a good enough keyboard for serious use. Yes, I could have used a laptop, but that's nowhere near as convenient as an instant-on device that truly goes everywhere with me. Devices with good keyboards are more than "communicators" or "messagers," they're truly able to do serious work. And if Windows Mobile Word got one level better, and handled entry of footnotes and some other things that it doesn't yet handle, it would be even better. (Note that it just has to allow these to be entered, it doesn't even have to show them well.)

Yes, the Nokia Communicator has an even bigger keyboard than the TyTN. See my old message that shows how they compare. But I find the TyTN's keyboard big enough for serious use. In the past few months I've taken dozens of pages of notes on my TyTN in meetings, both work and personal.

This is one reason I never bought a Treo or other PDA-phone with a tiny keyboard along the bottom. It was painful to stick with the old Nokia, but the K-JAM and TyTN are the first full-featured PDA-phones that have keyboards that support real work.

To end with a shameless plug, anyone interested in the book can go to the Harry Potter and Torah home page.