I got $10 skmei 1278, casio w96 copy, for two years, backlight is great, countdown, water resistant enough for swimming, +10sec a month, screen could have better viewing angles, bought replacement strap from Ali.

As for spelling I believe enabling flyspell-mode will do the job, i.e. M-x flyspell-mode

Are modes like Viper (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode) helpful when switching from vim to emacs?

Viper + vimpulse.el work great for me. Using Emacs with Vim key bindings is excellent.

vimpulse.el extends ViperMode with Vim features. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/vimpulse

Helpful for my wrists

You do not need command line, windows explorer can open ftp address.