Top 6 Items for the Travel Writer's Toolkit

I've been using a Palm III for years along with a keyboard for inputing my articles. I've chosen the Palm m105 because it has all you need for writing and the black and white screen makes it a value.

Here's the Palm m105 with keyboard, case, and screen protectors. Just what you may need for recording those special mussings for your web page.

When you need a digital recording in the field a compact minidisc player is just the ticket. This Sony was selected because it's been used by recording engineers to make on-site recordings instead of the larger and way more expensive DAT recorders commonly used, and it's cheap. You can take memos to yourself as well--disks can go 160 minutes in monaural mode.

I've been shooting with the first Canon Digital Elph for years. It's great to stuff this tiny wonder into your pocket when you don't think you'll need a camera--so when those unexpected events come up you're ready. Disadvantages? Well, the battery is proprietary and tiny, so it doesn't last as long as the 4 AA rechargables commonly found in larger and heavier cameras.

The C-pen hand scanner is a small, single line scanner that works quite well with a laptop. Find an article you want to keep and just run the scanner over the pertinent text and you've saved it to edit later.

Here's something you'll need if you want to transfer information from one computer to another quickly through a USB port. Available in sizes from 32 to 512 mb, you can store and share web pages, music, image files on a device the size of a keychain. Works on newer Mac or Windows systems without drivers and appears as a removable hard drive.