I saw some of these in a Department store in Thailand. They seemed quite expensive. Has anybody had any experience with these things? Worth the money for a starter, or should I avoid them?

Khorb khun.

they seemed quite good at first , i used to play around with them in the department stores a lot , the ones that allow you to input by writing i thought would be very helpful , but the fonts were so small and thai letters that have a similar appearance were hard to distinguish . after many weeks of fiddling around with them i came to the conclusion that , unless you are gadget minded , they would end up at the bottom of a drawer with all the other gadgets.

i never bought one and use a traditional dictionary , but i know some people from the language school who swore by them and use them all the time.

neither the traditional dictionary users nor the gadget users can speak fluent thai yet.