The Dana is great, but the regular Alphasmarts are particularly rock-solid and 2 AA batteries will last you over a year.
The Dana touchscreen isn't as contrasty, the backlight eats battery, and if you use up all your batteries you will lose your data without backups. It's all quite manageable of course (since as you say it's just a Palm PDA with a keyboard) and has much more functionality, but not as bulletproof.
(I'm just happy to participate in a Alphasmart discussion LOL.)
The Dana touchscreen isn't as contrasty, the backlight eats battery, and if you use up all your batteries you will lose your data without backups. It's all quite manageable of course (since as you say it's just a Palm PDA with a keyboard) and has much more functionality, but not as bulletproof.
(I'm just happy to participate in a Alphasmart discussion LOL.)