Broken Screen and Distraction Free Writing
For those that don’t follow me on Twitter (and I would say facebook but I left that this week due to finally having enough with the privacy concerns), I’ve been awaiting the return of my computer monitor.
Late last year, I upgraded my aging 19″ TFT monitor with a massive (in comparison!) 26″ monitor! Full HD screen (1920×1080) and about double the screen space compared to my old monitor. Anyhow, all was well until late last week when it broke on me 
As you can see from the attached picture, I had a coloumn of pixels die on me and remain pink. Within two months, I felt this was terrible and sent it back – thankfully CCL Online agreed with me and sorted it out – a brief period of testing, they came to the same conclusion I did that it was broken and they sent me another which I’m currently waiting for.
In the meantime, I’ve been using my Dell Streak a bit more than previously as it performs the majority of tasks I use my PC for (exceptions being games and films). It backs up the fact that an iPad might be a good purchase for me but that’s a different conversation 
I’ve found the Streak, when teamed up with a bluetooth keyboard, to be an ideal distraction free typing device – ideally disconnect it from wi-fi/data connection to stop tweets being downloaded or emails and there’s pretty much nothing else (at least on mine) that will interfere with typing once you get going.
As you can see in the picture, the Streak is attached to the top of the keyboard (a Microsoft Wireless Entertainment 7000 keyboard which is incredibly nice and I managed to snag it as a bargain on ebay as this is an international keyboard with hebrew characters under the normal latin characters – 100 pounds worth of keyboard for about £15!). The whole setup is nice though currently unstable (thanks to the Streak being attached to the keyboard via blue tack. I have just ordered a Gorillamobile to hold the Streak for me on the keyboard.
Currently my favourite tool for the writing is Evernote as it will automatically sync my typed notes to my PC though I have also used a text editor and then sync’d using Dropbox for Android. As the UK Streak is now on Android 2.2 (Froyo), it can now use Google Docs and allows easy access to notes anywhere. Of course, if you don’t have wireless or data, then it’s easy to save the file as a text file and transfer using the MicroSD card.
Overall the small screen helps keep the focus on what’s important – getting your ideas down into a readable format. Therefore I recommend anyone with an Android phone (though this should also work with iPhones and iPads) gives them a go as distraction free device. I find it really helps me. And as the phone is light and so is the keyboard, I could easily use this wherever takes my fancy so it’s well worth trying.
