Alphasmart 2000 and Neo Demonstration

Remember these? If you attended public school in the US between 1990 and 2014, chances are, you've used one. The Alphasmart was an ingenious solution to the word processing needs of educational institutions (and apparently, journalists). Watch and see!

[jimpanza]

I am so glad you are showing these. I had both a Alphasmart 2000, 3000 and NEO. Matter of fact I still have my NEO. Unfortunately I do not use my NEO much anymore but it is a device I will never get rid of. Because it has sentimental value to me. I had an 2000 and 3000 through all of middle and high school. After high school I got my NEO. However by that time I had a Laptop because I was going to college and had to have a Laptop for college. I don't see these used much more. I wish that Ren-Learning had not discontinued the Alphasmart Line. I think it could be great for the education market today. Anyways enough of my rambling on about my Alphasmart. Alphasmart was a big part of my life and thanks for showing it off to the world on your YouTube page.

[Dantastic]

This is coincidental, because I was just thinking about these last night, and I thought, "you know, I wonder why BBishopPCM never had a video on Alphasmarts." Thank you for explaining how they work; I was too young to understand electronics in depth in the 1st grade. I do remember that my school had both the older type that connected via ps2 and later on, they purchased the newer USB type, and none of the teachers knew how to use the USB type because they had no idea what a USB was at the time.

[xSlappykinkaidx]

I never thought of using these with my Linux systems. That's freaking genius. I can use one to store all my commonly used command strings & save the headache of having to type them all out when I set up a new system.

[vwestlife]

The infrared port is usually on the side or back of the laptop, so maybe that's why aiming the Alphasmart at the front of the laptop didn't work.

[WarthogRacer]

One of my elementary school teachers had a bunch of Alphasmart 2000s in 1998, I remember using them to write a paper and using the IR port to beam it directly to a printer. This teacher also introduced me to Google when it was "new".

[compactc]

I remember other people in class using these back in elementary school, the ones I remember were older and more squared off/boxy looking, but they wee Alphasmarts. This was back in the 1995-2000 era, but they weren't necessarily new units in use. I'd been trying to remember the name of these but couldn't for anything, glad I saw this video!

[Unicornguy]

I remember my friend in school had one of these. It was pretty cool and sometimes he would write stories on it and he would show me during indoor recesses. Man, were those the days!

[diamondj]

I used the Alphasmart 2000 back in high school. I sometimes used it to write my stories and reports. 

[ThePbatemon]

I remember these, typing a long story, then plugging them into computers and watching the words be typed was magical

[Anon]

As another cursed south paw I was also assigned a alphasmart 2000 in elementary school in 1998 in second grade, used that all the time. When I got to middle school I was assigned a Macbook G3, it was a Wallstreet II, in 2002, the model the teachers were upgrading from, this was how all the laptops that were assigned to students were done, I negotiated a ram upgrade around 2004, second half of 7th grade, I think it was upgraded to 256mb, don't quite remember, when I got to high school I was assigned a Powerbook G4 (it was a 15" rev B, 2003) with 256mb of RAM, by this point my school district was ending the laptop program for "special needs" students, I don't quite remember why, but I was grandfathered in, but in 2007 I bought my first laptop, I was working at the time, I got a Thinkpad R61e, still use it to this day, though upgraded over time with a WUXGA screen, a T61p FX570m motherboard, a X9000 CPU, 8gb of RAM and an SSD, great laptop. But my personal resistance to authority/censorship was already strong, I started a rebellion of proxy use to get around the content filter in the school around the time I returned their laptop and got my own, they ended threatening me with a felony, that did not happen but I was not bothered by it even then, did not stop when they prevented me from using their computers or network, I needed a laptop because part of my school day was spent at a trade school, in a fairly high level computer course, they would have wanted to prevent me from having my laptop but they really could not do to negotiations with the other school. So from second half of 2007 to my graduation in 2010 I dedicated my life to making the IT staffs lives as hard as I could without breaking any laws knowingly, I found it fun at the time, but now working in IT, not in education but still, I fell kinda bad for them.

[PhearaXT]

Yea, I remembered this one. As a little kid, I used to use this unit when I was in elementry school.

[HazelTheHare]

I remember my school still using these in about 2010 still .

[seanstechworld]

this is a walk down memory lane. i miss my alphasmart 3000

[Matt_Electronics]

I remember using Alphasmart Pro. Their white appearence made me think it was an Apple product back in the day. If I'm able to get my hands on one again, it would be so cool.

[catgirl_eva]

Someone in the last high school I went to had an Alphasmart Dana.  The school gave her the Dana to use in classes, but she always played games on it.

[SudosFTW]

I used a 3000 in middle school, they're the most comon. the Neo and neo2 were the replacements, but the company that owned Alphasmart discontinued them this past year.

I currently own a very dilapidated and dying 3000 with replaced keys from an old thinkpad (the 760XL keys fit by the way) and a Dana Wireless I picked up from eBay for 20 bucks. the Dana runs PalmOS and has quite a few apps that work with it in that regard. a search on Youtube finds a 64-bit driver for it to use with Palm Desktop 6.2? but it works! and I can connect to IRC with it and all that just fine.


Also, if you replace the batteries with newer Low-Self-Discharge NiMH batteries, the Dana and Neos run SO MUCH LONGER than with the old batteries.

[AnthonyGuidetti]

Oh yes, I remember these back in elementary school. I used one once and thought it was so cool. It was interesting they had them, because we also had iBooks to write documents on. As I got to middle school, that was the beginning of the Google Docs and flash drive craze, so I haven't seen any of these since. Now in college, it's all online. Cool piece of tech, though. Minimalism is dead, unfortunately.

[Motscoud]

My friends and I often left ascii art on our schools alphasmarts.
Happy times.

[Sutekh]

I think I remember a kid in my middle school using one of these.

[iamdigitalman]

I have a Alphasmart 3000 I found in goodwill for $8 (still has the price tag on it, I should take it off). Works great. I just fired it up for the first time in over a month, and it still has battery power. I think the 3x panasonic AAs in it were in it when I got it over a year ago, which is impressive. I researched and found how to upgrade the firmware on it, which was a PITA, but worth it. Too bad it's USB only, I wish I could use it on older macs. Oddly though, it's printer port is the old mac serial connector.