>I believe we'll see a return to more single use devices.
I believe that too. I tried using my smart phone to take notes at trade-shows, and it just doesn't work well. I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster than unlocking your phone, loading OneNote and writing down some notes.
>I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster
I actually took a cue from the disability world for this and use a neonotes notebook and smart pen. You get the little notebook for immediate writing, but you can digitize it later and transcribe it into text for editing.
Immensely helpful tool. Just a god-send for those long technical conferences as well as day-to-day program meetings.
Based on this comment I checked out their website... and holy crap is it awful. The "Description" is just a video, there's no explanation of the difference between the different pens, all the different kits are confusing, it just seems like a mess.
Please tell me the experience of using the pen(s?) is better than the site?
Absolutely, their website is simply garbage. Their niche in my world is use with disability services and accommodations in colleges. Notetakers will use their pens to take notes for folks who need that service, and then send the transcription to the student in question. They're nice because you can record the lecture to accompany notes for classes where the context of the notes is important (higher level math and english especially). You can then play-back the notes as they're written down along with the audio. Super handy for that.
I started using one just to test it for our students. They're not getting mine back.
It's nice because you can change the weight and color of the ink electronically, highlight, and record audio to go along with it. It uses bluetooth to your phone, where you can transcribe, add tags to filter and search, and generally organize your notes in a very short amount of time. You can edit your writing on the computer or on your phone, so you can remove sensitive notes for individual people and share the page with very little work. It automatically recognizes separate notebooks and organizes them appropriately. It can integrate to my calendar; that way calendar events are added automatically if I write them on the notebook paper. The same for contacts via e-mail or phone - it can automatically add them to your contacts if you write them down. You can e-mail several file types straight from the pen using an e-mail link on the physical paper (small picture of an envelope). It can automatically backup to several cloud providers as well. There are picture editing and video illustration options as well, but I am not familiar with them.
They're pretty intuitive. My handwriting is garbage and it does a good job of learning what I'm writing based on the first few pages of transcription changes that I've made.
I use mine for all meetings and notes in my day-to-day. It is invaluable for those of us with garbage memories. I assign my team tasks in different colors and send the .pdf page out when necessary.
I have that, I have a work laptop, that i dock into a displaylink set of screens to run my work dev environment. And then sitting on the desk next to me is my personal laptop. Totally different uses and the seperation is really important because i never worry about typing the wrong thing into the wrong context because the full size keyboard is attached to the work computer.
It's worked really well for me for about 3 years now. And i hardly look at my phone.
I do pretty much the same, but I have my phone sitting next to me with an external bluetooth keyboard. I'd use an iPad, but there's no Whatsapp for those currently.
I made another comment here about owning one of these.
Yeah, there is a really compelling idea in single use tech/computers, especially for creative use. AlphaSmart really is distraction free to an extreme and instant on, writing where you left off in like three seconds is amazing.
Problem though is that this is a cottage industry at best and any new devices will be priced in the same range as a POS laptop.. so why buy it? $600 for a new Justwrite? That’s a little dear.
> And then keeping the two devices in physically separate places.
I've recently gotten to experience this somewhat, although on a single machine. With the whole "no in-person meetings" thing, I've been working out at my cabin with LTE tethering as my only Internet connection. Since I've got a limited amount of bandwidth, I spend most of the time off-line. It seems like the (admittedly miniscule) activation energy to set up the tether connection is just enough to make me be thoughtful about when I'm connected to the Internet, and it's really refreshing to not have all the notifications popping up all the time.
If you use Windows, a similar experience can be attained by choosing the "taskbar where window is open" option in the "show taskbar buttons on:" setting of the Taskbar Settings window. this only shows the apps you have open on each monitor on that monitors taskbar. It provides me with a sense of using two separate computers, one for slack/email and one for code, while still having the convenience of copy and pasting between "computers".
I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. (Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.)
He added a note to the top, however, saying that he gave up on his method.
The author is using a 2007 model from eBay, but it is cool to see the technology from my childhood classroom almost 30 years ago persist. I definitely wrote a few elementary essays on these in my day.
Makes sense. Single-purposes devices are kind of cool. It's why eBook readers have a place in a world where tablets exist.
I don't know about AlphaSmart though - the screen is too cramped. I suspect after the initial euphoria of finding another way to write wears off, the author will get tired of the limitations and go back to writing on a tablet or PC. Having said that, maybe there is a market for a writing-only device, similar to a read-only eBook reader.
The screen is not really relevant in this case since the point is to get words onto the page. It is to avoid procrastinating enabling distractions in this author's case, but I have also heard of authors turning off their monitor while writing to avoid premature editing. Other authors find archaic software most effective, while some use modern applications that are designed to display as much or as little information as they need.
It seems as though writing is a highly individualized process.
My partner is a novelist and owns two of these. She's been drafting with them for a little over a year and swears by them. She says the appeal is that you can't go back and read more than a few lines so you just kind of go and then edit later. I also think the appeal is the keys themselves. Similar in feel to an old Thinkpad.
I wouldn't go as far, the typing feel isn't as good as old Thinkpads and the keys are definitely more fragile. Can't replace them, either. A device of the same form factor, even display, with an Arduino for tinkering and mechanical keys would be a godsend.
I use an Atreus [1] as my daily keyboard, and Phil has been experimenting with various forms of "cyberdeck" based on that [2,3]. Something like that, with a minimalist emacs config like [4] would be an awesome portable writing device.
The Japanese have modern devices like this - this one is about $250 and had a E-ink display and a folding keyboard. You can put the keyboard in English mode - a few keys are in odd places but bearable. It's increased my output by several orders of magnitude.
That is exactly the type of device I've dreamed about for years. Thank you for pointing it out. I wonder if there is a version targeted more for English language.
Beautiful, but $400 is steep for a monotasker. I'd gladly let students use these in a class, though, as an alternative to notepads.
Which probably says something about the rise of keyboards and the fall of handwriting; I get that ASCII is more useful than paper, but $400 buys a lot of luxurious pens and paper.
I've used the DM100 for ~5 years now. It's an entirely different feel from a general-purpose device /w foldable keyboard. For starters, it's "always on" -- when you open the case, you're in the text editor and can start typing immediately. Second, it's a distraction free device: there's no wifi, no checking email, no browsing. Third, it's physically convenient, you can put it on your lap in a meeting or keep it on the table top (the display is not tall), taking notes without disrupting flow. Lastly, it uses easily replaced 9-volt batteries, which last a few weeks of occasional usage.
There are two quirks in the older model I have. First, when opening the cover, it always starts in Japanese, so you have to press a key to get it to English. Second, some of the characters are in different slots; e.g. the apostrophe is inconvenient. Third, the keyboard is a tad scrunched.
Part of the point of having a separate device is the additional friction of switching to distractions like Twitter etc and creating a separate context where you're just doing one task like writing. Using a cellphone even on airplane mode breaks both of those because it's super easy to turn back on and doesn't define a separate context.
This seems rather expensive for what amounts to a keyboard + eink display.
It would be nice to have an e-ink display, but I can also buy a thinkpad x201/x220 for <$70/<$100 usd on ebay right now. It's not the smallest thing ever, but the x201 is pretty dang small for a "writing only" machine with a good keyboard. And I can still do basic web browsing or email if I really want to.
There's a bunch of cheap devices/older laptops that could fill this space the problem is that
it's hard to install a stripped and locked down OS if one is not a computer whiz or no such OS exists.
I have a better idea for an OS that runs off a stick and only has text editor capabilities and nothing more. Once can reuse their own laptop for writing. Once they boot in the writing mode with the memory stick on there's nothing else to access. The only problem is that as of now no such OS exists.
I'd also love to boot off a stick and only have access to a repl of my favorite language, nothing more.
Anybody out there up for the challenge of creating such an OS?
Someone could make a distribution based on tiny core and have it boot into bash, and only install vim. Then create a separate partition to mount as a usb drive to move your work over.
You could also accomplish this by installing any random distribution, then remove the browser and network capabilities, then change the admin password to something hard to remember and either discard the password or store it someplace hard to reach.
This does not address an important point made in the article:
"n this way, the AlphaSmart provides an almost Pavlovian space in which to write: Get the device out, and the brain immediately moves into writing mode. This is another reason why I’ve been resistant to software on my computer that’s supposed to compel creativity and productivity. Because I do such a wide variety of tasks on my computer, my brain isn’t primed by the space to focus on one particular job. In this way, my computer’s all-purpose abilities, which is the main selling point of most laptops, actually becomes a liability. But the absolute simplicity of the AlphaSmart means that when I bring it out, I subconsciously know exactly what it is I need to do: write."
Yes, you can buy a laptop that is as much different from the other laptop you use, but it will still be that, a laptop. Not a mere writing device. I instantly get how that makes a big psychological difference, even if the machine is crippled in a way that would make it "impossible" to do anything else with it.
So, it is exactly NOT about any form of possible reuse for other purposes.
> So, it is exactly NOT about any form of possible reuse for other purposes.
In one sense, sure. In another sense, it's just marketing for people who are unable to control their impulses and have a lot of money to spend.
> but it will still be that, a laptop
A laptop that isn't connected to the internet is a writing device.
There are numerous word processors based around this concept as well.
Spending $$$ on niche products won't make you write any more than figuring out a space to write in + a routine will. But people can't sell that for $400.
You don't have to spend -anything- to have bouts of focus for writing. Zero. Nada. But it's easier to spend money than to figure out why ignoring notifications is so impossible.
It’s not exactly what you’re asking for, but my solution has been a decade-old eeePC 701 netbook with FreeDOS. The writing is done in pico. To get files off, I need to reboot with a USB key attached. It’d be a dream if wordgrinder was ported to FreeDOS.
I think one aspect of the benefit highlighted by this article and by these devices in general is that they are not capable of being multifunctional devices, so that their inability to serve other wants is a benefit to the product category — not a drawback. You aren't wrong to highlight that good multipurpose devices exist in this size and form factor, but there are still people for whom single-tasking is non-negotiable, especially writers.
Computers have the ability to disable their connections to the internet. Recent apple products have Do-Not-Disturb modes.
Maybe, one could do some introspection about why they are unable to put notifications on hold?
Nah. Better spend a lot of money instead, because that will fix the root issue, assuredly.
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W.r.t my original comment: For $70-$100 (at most!) I can take a laptop, disable the wifi, and open a word processor.
It is admittedly a splurge, as I already have a desktop pc and a perfectly capable macbook. However, that price point for a dedicated writing machine with a great keyboard was worth it to me. I did it for the keyboard, not the (lack of) notifications, but one could easily do it for that purpose.
Sometimes dedicated devices are a deliberate choice with desirable benefits. You don't use a pocket multitool to prepare a fine meal just because it has a blade. You just buy a knife that was made for that purpose.
I think comparing a knife to a dedicated writing device is like comparing apples and oranges. We use different utensils because they innately have different properties that are useful in different aspects of cooking. It's not that a knife and spoon both have the same exact function, only the knife doesn't send me push notifications.
A laptop with a keyboard is not going to give you different writing properties than a screen + a keyboard. They both will write text just the same. One can turn off notifications/connection to the internet if desired, and now they're both quiet devices.
You come across as weirdly upset and condescending about this. Why do you care if someone else wants to waste their money on a shortcut to avoid introspection about their poor impulse control?
I bought one of these things within 2 minutes of reading the blog post we're commenting on. I don't really need to "reflect" on the reasons that I sometimes have poor impulse control. It's not like not knowing why I'm sometimes tempted means that I'm no longer tempted.
And part of impulse control is "tying yourself to the mast" to avoid temptation in the future. It'd be stupid to keep piles of tempting junk food within arms length at all times and then berate yourself for "poor impulse control".
Similarly, it'd be stupid to put tons of social media, notifications, and games just a click or two away from where you're trying to do something hard and meaningful, and then berate yourself (or others) for your lack of reflection on your poor impulse control.
Have you considered that an adult contemplating buying such a device is aware they have an impulse control issue, has probably spent most of their life trying to rein it in, and still finds this product useful?
If you have the magical secret to impulse control, please share with the rest of us. Otherwise get off your high horse and shut up.
> If you have the magical secret to impulse control, please share with the rest of us. Otherwise get off your high horse and shut up.
Parent comment never claimed to have this. Parent comment, and I, will retain the right to criticize overpriced products like this.
I would like proof that $$$ products like this are more effective at getting people to write than, say, creating a consistent routine, working out, dedicating a space/time just for writing, etc.
If we're just going to use anecdata, the most consistent advice I've seen from prolific authors is to "write something, even a little, every day, and read a lot". If you have lack of impulse control, then you need to sit down and reflect on why that might be the case. Maybe consult a medical professional if it's that dire. But those take work and introspection instead of just spending $$$ on a neat-looking product.
For the record, I -would- pay a lot of money for a laptop built like a thinkpad x201/x220, that had a good keyboard and an e-ink display! ...not for notifications, but I find e-ink displays significantly help me with eye strain.
> Parent comment never claimed to have this. Parent comment, and I, will retain the right to criticize overpriced products like this.
I have zero issues with people criticizing a product for being overpriced. GP however in addition criticized people, implying that if you buy this product you should instead start practicing impulse control.
That's a comment very dismissive towards people with impulse control. Maybe things are different now, but when I was a kid, having poor impulse control was something that one would be criticized and shamed for regularly. It's very condescending to just say "have you tried improving your impulse control" as if that's going to be some revelation.
As a similar issue, a friend of mine has an autistic kid. She gets annoyed any time a pop-science article appears with some new treatment/method/etc. appears for autism because for the next year lots of well meaning people she meets will mention it when they find out her son is autistic. She doesn't typically say it, but her desired response is along the lines of: "Yes, I've been raising an austistic son for 12 years and yet I haven't done enough research about it to stumble across something that was published widely in the mainstream media."
> I would like proof that $$$ products like this are more effective at getting people to write than, say, creating a consistent routine, working out, dedicating a space/time just for writing, etc.
It's not an either/or proposition. As you mention, having a dedicated space and time make a big difference, but I think a computing device helps define the space. I will sometimes watch a youtube video in one window while reading an article in another window, but that doesn't happen when I'm watching a movie on my TV. Would people be equally well served with an old laptop with broken WiFi and no games installed? Probably. That doesn't make this device useless though, and if you don't already have an old laptop with broken WiFi, then $250 isn't that expensive, and this is probably much easier on the eyes if you want to, say, write outside.
> If you have lack of impulse control, then you need to sit down and reflect on why that might be the case. Maybe consult a medical professional if it's that dire. But those take work and introspection instead of just spending $$$ on a neat-looking product
I agree with this entire sentence! If all your problems can be completely fixed by spending $300 on a word-processor then your problems probably weren't that serious to begin with. However, I do think it can help create a dedicated space and time just for writing.
[edit]
Just noticed that you wrote the GP comment to what I originally responded to:
> It would be nice to have an e-ink display, but I can also buy a thinkpad x201/x220 for <$70/<$100 usd on ebay right now. It's not the smallest thing ever, but the x201 is pretty dang small for a "writing only" machine with a good keyboard. And I can still do basic web browsing or email if I really want to.
This is totally a fair criticism of the product. I didn't feel a need to respond to it when I read it earlier, but since you got me hooked ;) I'll respond:
1. A new x201 display would be better in some conditions, worse in others than an e-ink display; I don't know how they age, but if you plan on primarily indoors work with not a lot of natural light, then we can call it a win for the x201; if you plan on working out side during the day it's a win for an e-ink display
2. "basic web browsing or email" is a downside for some people, but you could probably pull the wifi card (or cut traces if it's on the motherboard), or just buy one with broken wifi if needed, so inasmuch as an x201 could be modified to work this way, but a wordprocessor could not be modified to do web-browsing, that's a win for the x201.
Interestingly I just bought a second hand DM30 and am looking into how I can get it to run a code editor (or just accept different file types). If anyone has any idea on how to accomplish such a feat please share.
If anyone’s planning to hack them, IIRC, DM30 is custom RTOS on ARM926EJ-S, DM200 is Linux on AllWinner(rooting available), anything else is obscure Toshiba CPU with very little RAM running unknown RTOS.
Or just get a Bluetooth keyboard and connect it to you smartphone. But I guess the appeal is the reduced distractions in the screen. Is there an app that pauses any distractions (messages, calls, notifications, etc) so you can focus on the current foreground application?
Wow! This is perfect, for a long time I've been using a bluetooth keyboard with my iPhone for writing but every notification means distraction while trying to write :(
It's as floppy as you'd expect. They do make another device with a more laptop form factor - but as I understand it, it doesn't have as good English support. I could be wrong.
Thanks for making me aware of this, I just got the DM30 and it's excellent. I was looking at a Remarkable tablet, but this is far better for my needs as text files are central to my workflow.
On a related note, I've been imagining this product idea, as an educational toy that would help kids practice typing and spelling:
A small physical keyboard with a small (but larger than the AlphaSmart's) attached color display, which does nothing but present a single picture of the thing that you've typed, and show nothing if the current input is misspelled or otherwise not found. I'm thinking that it would have an internal (no internet connection) visual dictionary similar to the one that comes with the Scribblenauts game and would be rugged enough for 3 year old kids to play with.
Do you happen to know of any existing product like this, or the feasibility of building one?
I toyed with the possibility of something like this, in my case I was thinking more in an app with a similar functionality. Maybe more oriented to simple phrases than single words.
In terms of age ranges, toddler generally refers to 1-3 years old, while 3-5 (which I'm interested in) would be pre-school. But going from your Amazon query did lead me to find this one, which seems to be the closest to what I'm thinking of. Thanks :)
I don't know if they have something specifically like what you want, but VTech has a whole range of educational toys with keyboards and assorted phonics and spelling tutorials.
If you do a search for "vtech abc" and variations you'll find a huge number of different types of devices.
How safe is your text on this? What if this thing breaks or has some glitch? Is there some form of cloud backup? I'd be terrified of losing data to this thing.
Nope, if it breaks, it's lost. However, I don't really think that's a practical issue. The workflow is going to be one where you write in chunks, and then copy over to your computer.
After all, part of the appeal is that you can't edit anything beyond what you're currently typing right now, like a typewriter. However, you still need to edit eventually, and that naturally forces you to move data occasionally to your computer.
And even if it does break, you probably remember what you wrote enough to recreate it anyway.
If you're writing hundreds of pages at a time, it's probably a mess anyway.
Based on the article, it's simple enough to just use your computer to back up the text. They seem to adopt a flow of "write for 30-60 minutes, upload to a computer".
It also seems stupid-simple enough that losing data will require a pretty major event (i.e. more than just a power loss).
I still remember as a child playing on a 1980s word processor that my mom had. It had maybe a 4 line display, with an ugly greenish backlighting and no battery whatsoever. It did however have a hinge mechanism so that little text only screen would fold over the keyboard.
It reminds me of the TRS-80 model 100. I seem to remember reading a story linked here a while back regarding the 100 and how popular it was for journalists to write stories on, and maybe be uploaded via modem to the editor when completed? (I might be remembering this incorrectly)
The common setup that I've seen photos of consisted of a model 100 and an acoustic coupler set sized to fit a north american standard payphone handset. Typically a 300 baud modem to dial in to a special system operated by wire services and large newspapers and file the plaintext of the story.
Seems like any laptop booting a minimal Linux distro straight into a similarly simplistic text editor should be able to provide the same experience. Could be carried around on a USB stick, effectively turning any available computer into an AlphaSmart.
Except for the part about "Three AA batteries power it for up to 700 hours". Not having to carry a power adapter nor worrying about battery life is really nice.
Dell used to include a minimal Arm/Linux system inside some of their laptops as an instant-on, long battery life option. No idea whether anyone actually bought them though.
These people have a somewhat modern alternative with mechanical keyboard and eink screen. It has wifi and that's it.
From watching the reviews I understood that a major drawback is that no editing is possible on the device itself and it is very expensive (600$)
I personally use occasionally an android based ebook reader with a bluetooth keyboard (Onyx BOOX Poke 2 with logitech k380). Distraction free writing is a thing.
This feels like the sort of thing people buy to kid themselves that the problem with their writing lies outside their own brains.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a dedicated writing device but, for me as someone who writes pretty much for the entire working day, inconvenience is the biggest bar to writing other than lack of sleep. If I can't edit on the device, or find the text in my usual GSuite/Office 365 spaces, then maybe I'd be better off with a $40 dictaphone and Rev.com.
> This feels like the sort of thing people buy to kid themselves that the problem with their writing lies outside their own brains.
I posted elsewhere in this thread about this, so to summarize: I've been at a cabin using LTE tethering, and am consciously turning my Internet connection off and on.
I fully realize that the problem is in my brain, but putting up just that tiny of a barrier is enough of an effective "hack" to change the way I work in a positive way. Because there's no connection most of the time I'm working, there's no HN, there's no email popping up, there's no Slack notifications, and there's no "falling down a rabbit hole searching for a solution". I'm spending way more time writing down/rubber ducking the problem I'm trying to solve and coming up with the solution myself (which generally results in a much better understanding of the problem)
I have an kindle fire keyboard with bluetooth, writing in Jotterpad. I switched to the AlphaSmart NEO2 and it's far superior both in price, time-to-write, and lack of distractions for initial drafts. I chose it after being stalked by relentless $400 FreeWrite ads for months. My wife googled "freewrite alternatives." I have also used apps like "Concentrate" and all the other distraction-free apps.
I have also considered minimal linux distros but realize that it's not going to be much better than my kindle fire.
For editing, I would still use my kindle fire.
I use a custom gulp-based build process from markdown files that I wrote which spits out manuscript format, and the NEO works fine with that. Of course it can only hold 9 scenes at once.
I picked up a bluetooth keyboard that folds to a size that fits easily in my pocket and paired with my phone that turned out to be a really good writing experience. Writing apps on the phone still default to taking over the full screen and using the phone's "Do Not Disturb" mode was enough to get a good distraction free environment. (On the phone at least, one day in November I was writing in an Irish pub. There was a football game on I was half interested in. A bagpipe band showed up to play a set. The power went out for an hour or so and I was writing under candle light. Plenty of interesting, weird distractions outside of my phone were had.)
I'm using an old asus transformer with external powerbank because its battery has crapped out. It's one of the worst devices I've ever possessed but still gets the job done.
Now if I only knew where to get antiglare screen protection that actually works. I renewed it recently and the new one is not anti-glare at all. :/
I think this is a worthy read because it looks a computing product from a user's perspective instead of a engineer or an MBA. Multi-function everything devices with the addictive potential of nicotine may be engineering marvels and business rockstars, but this person wanted to write without distraction and needed to reach into the past to find a product that met their needs.
And it's a fun exercise to take this user's need and whiteboard out a new product for them. How are those ergonomics; could we hinge the display or project it somehow in a way that will let them type longer without discomfort? How's that LCD's readability; would eink be better? Should the device be doing incremental backups to the cloud? Should it offer dictation?
So a Linux machine (like an old laptop) booted into single-user mode seems like a good approach here. Single shell, single application at a time, no GUI.
I have an old Linux laptop (an old iBook G4) that boots into a non graphical environment and starts emacs in text mode on login with no network connectivity by default.
This misses the simplicity though, right? $35 and this device arrives ready to record typing and goes 500h+ between charges. I have one of these. The keyboard is also surprisingly good, as in good enough that it also won't be a reason you can't be smashing out prose. I honestly think a "modern" version of this could be exactly this and there would still be a market.
exactly. the pitfall of this thing is that it stores everything in RAM and it is more than possible (I've seen it many, many, many times) to lose everything in a blink if the batteries die and the internal backup battery is dead or bad.
The send button is really cool. It turns it into an HID device and spews a stream of characters out over USB. It would be pretty easy and pretty cool to make a tiny little usb device that can accept that stream every time you hit 'SEND' and append it to a file on a... more robust system.
On the topic of improving the experience, this sounds like a good opportunity for using something like 3D XPoint as the the primary / only form of RAM on the hypothetical successor.
The real key feature is the lack of access to the Internet. Having a connection just for backup etc wouldn't really break the single task machine benefits.
As long as you can't use it to get distracted, it wouldn't matter at all, though the setup and battery draw of such a connection might impact the user experience negatively.
Maybe BTLE and an app on your phone for sync/backup would be an option? If I were using such a gadget, I'd really appreciate unobtrusive and just-works-ish features to make sure I don't lose what I've written.
My dad used a Tandy Dreamwriter for many years to write on while working as a travel journalist, well into the 2000's.
Small, Z80 based, with a few lines of text on the screen and powered by AA batteries. Other journalists used to laugh at the 'old guy with the Fisher Price computer', but the instant-on and distraction free typing was a definite advantage. Pretty nice not having to worry about a fragile, expensive laptop while out in the jungle or whatever, too.
In the early 1990s I got to shoot some NCAA Div 1 basketball. Some reporters that showed up and worked from the press room often had these old TRS80 "Slab portables". They're hard to describe, but a 2 inch thick open-face notebook coputer, with a real keyboard and a small black and white screen.
Medium has a very weird paywall where you are rewarded for clearing your tracking cookies after every visit. They strongly encourage you to sign in, and if you do, it will say "you're out of free articles". But if you sign out and clear cookies, you get to read the article for free.
I guess this is better than "you don't have an account, no article for you!" but it still strikes me as odd.
Although the author mentions using outdated and unsupported software to transfer the text, it isn't actually required.
These also have a mode where it just "types" the text into the program of your choice, via the usb cable. No drivers required and works with any OS that can recognize a usb keyboard.
You might be interested in the WikiReader, but not actually. You could probably do a Wikipedia export to a good e-ink reader and disable networking and call it a day?
> I found a free text editor specifically written for the dana’s wide screen (SiEd, dana version) on SourceForge in alpha, and left abandoned 4 years ago. That editor will sometimes crash the whole system...
Nice to know my crappy code is still causing problems all these years later.
248 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 313 ms ] threadFor one, I've thought a lot about having two separate computers: one for writing code and a second for googling when I need help / slack / email / HN.
And then keeping the two devices in physically separate places.
I could accomplish this with software and accounts, but I know for myself it would be less effective.
I believe that too. I tried using my smart phone to take notes at trade-shows, and it just doesn't work well. I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster than unlocking your phone, loading OneNote and writing down some notes.
I actually took a cue from the disability world for this and use a neonotes notebook and smart pen. You get the little notebook for immediate writing, but you can digitize it later and transcribe it into text for editing.
Immensely helpful tool. Just a god-send for those long technical conferences as well as day-to-day program meetings.
Please tell me the experience of using the pen(s?) is better than the site?
I started using one just to test it for our students. They're not getting mine back.
It's nice because you can change the weight and color of the ink electronically, highlight, and record audio to go along with it. It uses bluetooth to your phone, where you can transcribe, add tags to filter and search, and generally organize your notes in a very short amount of time. You can edit your writing on the computer or on your phone, so you can remove sensitive notes for individual people and share the page with very little work. It automatically recognizes separate notebooks and organizes them appropriately. It can integrate to my calendar; that way calendar events are added automatically if I write them on the notebook paper. The same for contacts via e-mail or phone - it can automatically add them to your contacts if you write them down. You can e-mail several file types straight from the pen using an e-mail link on the physical paper (small picture of an envelope). It can automatically backup to several cloud providers as well. There are picture editing and video illustration options as well, but I am not familiar with them.
They're pretty intuitive. My handwriting is garbage and it does a good job of learning what I'm writing based on the first few pages of transcription changes that I've made.
I use mine for all meetings and notes in my day-to-day. It is invaluable for those of us with garbage memories. I assign my team tasks in different colors and send the .pdf page out when necessary.
100% their website is crap.
It's worked really well for me for about 3 years now. And i hardly look at my phone.
Yeah, there is a really compelling idea in single use tech/computers, especially for creative use. AlphaSmart really is distraction free to an extreme and instant on, writing where you left off in like three seconds is amazing.
Problem though is that this is a cottage industry at best and any new devices will be priced in the same range as a POS laptop.. so why buy it? $600 for a new Justwrite? That’s a little dear.
I've recently gotten to experience this somewhat, although on a single machine. With the whole "no in-person meetings" thing, I've been working out at my cabin with LTE tethering as my only Internet connection. Since I've got a limited amount of bandwidth, I spend most of the time off-line. It seems like the (admittedly miniscule) activation energy to set up the tether connection is just enough to make me be thoughtful about when I'm connected to the Internet, and it's really refreshing to not have all the notifications popping up all the time.
I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. (Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.)
He added a note to the top, however, saying that he gave up on his method.
I don't know about AlphaSmart though - the screen is too cramped. I suspect after the initial euphoria of finding another way to write wears off, the author will get tired of the limitations and go back to writing on a tablet or PC. Having said that, maybe there is a market for a writing-only device, similar to a read-only eBook reader.
The article mentions just such a device[0]
[0] https://getfreewrite.com/collections/writing-tools
The other device I often use is a Thinkpad A20m running Linux. The only web browser on it is lynx (which I mostly use or Wikipedia).
It seems as though writing is a highly individualized process.
1. https://atreus.technomancy.us/
2. https://atreus.technomancy.us/decklog
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/d2rwp1/atreus_de...
4. https://github.com/rougier/elegant-emacs
https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/
Wonder how much trouble it would be for them to integrate RIME, I'd buy that in an instant.
Which probably says something about the rise of keyboards and the fall of handwriting; I get that ASCII is more useful than paper, but $400 buys a lot of luxurious pens and paper.
Granted I’m a huge user of fountain pens and note books already :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259
There are two quirks in the older model I have. First, when opening the cover, it always starts in Japanese, so you have to press a key to get it to English. Second, some of the characters are in different slots; e.g. the apostrophe is inconvenient. Third, the keyboard is a tad scrunched.
quite unfortunate -- i think they needed a little more hype.
It would be nice to have an e-ink display, but I can also buy a thinkpad x201/x220 for <$70/<$100 usd on ebay right now. It's not the smallest thing ever, but the x201 is pretty dang small for a "writing only" machine with a good keyboard. And I can still do basic web browsing or email if I really want to.
I have a better idea for an OS that runs off a stick and only has text editor capabilities and nothing more. Once can reuse their own laptop for writing. Once they boot in the writing mode with the memory stick on there's nothing else to access. The only problem is that as of now no such OS exists.
I'd also love to boot off a stick and only have access to a repl of my favorite language, nothing more.
Anybody out there up for the challenge of creating such an OS?
"n this way, the AlphaSmart provides an almost Pavlovian space in which to write: Get the device out, and the brain immediately moves into writing mode. This is another reason why I’ve been resistant to software on my computer that’s supposed to compel creativity and productivity. Because I do such a wide variety of tasks on my computer, my brain isn’t primed by the space to focus on one particular job. In this way, my computer’s all-purpose abilities, which is the main selling point of most laptops, actually becomes a liability. But the absolute simplicity of the AlphaSmart means that when I bring it out, I subconsciously know exactly what it is I need to do: write."
Yes, you can buy a laptop that is as much different from the other laptop you use, but it will still be that, a laptop. Not a mere writing device. I instantly get how that makes a big psychological difference, even if the machine is crippled in a way that would make it "impossible" to do anything else with it.
So, it is exactly NOT about any form of possible reuse for other purposes.
In one sense, sure. In another sense, it's just marketing for people who are unable to control their impulses and have a lot of money to spend.
> but it will still be that, a laptop
A laptop that isn't connected to the internet is a writing device.
There are numerous word processors based around this concept as well.
Spending $$$ on niche products won't make you write any more than figuring out a space to write in + a routine will. But people can't sell that for $400.
You don't have to spend -anything- to have bouts of focus for writing. Zero. Nada. But it's easier to spend money than to figure out why ignoring notifications is so impossible.
Maybe, one could do some introspection about why they are unable to put notifications on hold?
Nah. Better spend a lot of money instead, because that will fix the root issue, assuredly.
---
W.r.t my original comment: For $70-$100 (at most!) I can take a laptop, disable the wifi, and open a word processor.
It is admittedly a splurge, as I already have a desktop pc and a perfectly capable macbook. However, that price point for a dedicated writing machine with a great keyboard was worth it to me. I did it for the keyboard, not the (lack of) notifications, but one could easily do it for that purpose.
A laptop with a keyboard is not going to give you different writing properties than a screen + a keyboard. They both will write text just the same. One can turn off notifications/connection to the internet if desired, and now they're both quiet devices.
I bought one of these things within 2 minutes of reading the blog post we're commenting on. I don't really need to "reflect" on the reasons that I sometimes have poor impulse control. It's not like not knowing why I'm sometimes tempted means that I'm no longer tempted.
And part of impulse control is "tying yourself to the mast" to avoid temptation in the future. It'd be stupid to keep piles of tempting junk food within arms length at all times and then berate yourself for "poor impulse control".
Similarly, it'd be stupid to put tons of social media, notifications, and games just a click or two away from where you're trying to do something hard and meaningful, and then berate yourself (or others) for your lack of reflection on your poor impulse control.
If you have the magical secret to impulse control, please share with the rest of us. Otherwise get off your high horse and shut up.
Parent comment never claimed to have this. Parent comment, and I, will retain the right to criticize overpriced products like this.
I would like proof that $$$ products like this are more effective at getting people to write than, say, creating a consistent routine, working out, dedicating a space/time just for writing, etc.
If we're just going to use anecdata, the most consistent advice I've seen from prolific authors is to "write something, even a little, every day, and read a lot". If you have lack of impulse control, then you need to sit down and reflect on why that might be the case. Maybe consult a medical professional if it's that dire. But those take work and introspection instead of just spending $$$ on a neat-looking product.
For the record, I -would- pay a lot of money for a laptop built like a thinkpad x201/x220, that had a good keyboard and an e-ink display! ...not for notifications, but I find e-ink displays significantly help me with eye strain.
I have zero issues with people criticizing a product for being overpriced. GP however in addition criticized people, implying that if you buy this product you should instead start practicing impulse control.
That's a comment very dismissive towards people with impulse control. Maybe things are different now, but when I was a kid, having poor impulse control was something that one would be criticized and shamed for regularly. It's very condescending to just say "have you tried improving your impulse control" as if that's going to be some revelation.
As a similar issue, a friend of mine has an autistic kid. She gets annoyed any time a pop-science article appears with some new treatment/method/etc. appears for autism because for the next year lots of well meaning people she meets will mention it when they find out her son is autistic. She doesn't typically say it, but her desired response is along the lines of: "Yes, I've been raising an austistic son for 12 years and yet I haven't done enough research about it to stumble across something that was published widely in the mainstream media."
> I would like proof that $$$ products like this are more effective at getting people to write than, say, creating a consistent routine, working out, dedicating a space/time just for writing, etc.
It's not an either/or proposition. As you mention, having a dedicated space and time make a big difference, but I think a computing device helps define the space. I will sometimes watch a youtube video in one window while reading an article in another window, but that doesn't happen when I'm watching a movie on my TV. Would people be equally well served with an old laptop with broken WiFi and no games installed? Probably. That doesn't make this device useless though, and if you don't already have an old laptop with broken WiFi, then $250 isn't that expensive, and this is probably much easier on the eyes if you want to, say, write outside.
> If you have lack of impulse control, then you need to sit down and reflect on why that might be the case. Maybe consult a medical professional if it's that dire. But those take work and introspection instead of just spending $$$ on a neat-looking product
I agree with this entire sentence! If all your problems can be completely fixed by spending $300 on a word-processor then your problems probably weren't that serious to begin with. However, I do think it can help create a dedicated space and time just for writing.
[edit]
Just noticed that you wrote the GP comment to what I originally responded to:
> It would be nice to have an e-ink display, but I can also buy a thinkpad x201/x220 for <$70/<$100 usd on ebay right now. It's not the smallest thing ever, but the x201 is pretty dang small for a "writing only" machine with a good keyboard. And I can still do basic web browsing or email if I really want to.
This is totally a fair criticism of the product. I didn't feel a need to respond to it when I read it earlier, but since you got me hooked ;) I'll respond:
1. A new x201 display would be better in some conditions, worse in others than an e-ink display; I don't know how they age, but if you plan on primarily indoors work with not a lot of natural light, then we can call it a win for the x201; if you plan on working out side during the day it's a win for an e-ink display
2. "basic web browsing or email" is a downside for some people, but you could probably pull the wifi card (or cut traces if it's on the motherboard), or just buy one with broken wifi if needed, so inasmuch as an x201 could be modified to work this way, but a wordprocessor could not be modified to do web-browsing, that's a win for the x201.
3. For the freewrite traveler ...
Would you happen to know any details on the OS/processor of the old sony PRS-350 e-readers?
Do you happen to know of any existing product like this, or the feasibility of building one?
There are a bunch of toy laptops for toddlers too. I dont think there is any space inbetween.
I suppose my proposed target audience is 3-5 year olds. Do you think there wouldn't be enough interest?
https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-W8777-Fun-2-Learn-Smart-...
If you do a search for "vtech abc" and variations you'll find a huge number of different types of devices.
After all, part of the appeal is that you can't edit anything beyond what you're currently typing right now, like a typewriter. However, you still need to edit eventually, and that naturally forces you to move data occasionally to your computer.
And even if it does break, you probably remember what you wrote enough to recreate it anyway.
If you're writing hundreds of pages at a time, it's probably a mess anyway.
It also seems stupid-simple enough that losing data will require a pretty major event (i.e. more than just a power loss).
We had two in my house, even though we also had general purpose computers. I think they were still in use into the early 90s for school reports.
ignore the cellphone part here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQqWHLZjOjA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitude_ON
Doesn’t look like it ever took off - I helped port an office suite to it.
http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/index.html
https://getfreewrite.com/
I personally use occasionally an android based ebook reader with a bluetooth keyboard (Onyx BOOX Poke 2 with logitech k380). Distraction free writing is a thing.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a dedicated writing device but, for me as someone who writes pretty much for the entire working day, inconvenience is the biggest bar to writing other than lack of sleep. If I can't edit on the device, or find the text in my usual GSuite/Office 365 spaces, then maybe I'd be better off with a $40 dictaphone and Rev.com.
I posted elsewhere in this thread about this, so to summarize: I've been at a cabin using LTE tethering, and am consciously turning my Internet connection off and on.
I fully realize that the problem is in my brain, but putting up just that tiny of a barrier is enough of an effective "hack" to change the way I work in a positive way. Because there's no connection most of the time I'm working, there's no HN, there's no email popping up, there's no Slack notifications, and there's no "falling down a rabbit hole searching for a solution". I'm spending way more time writing down/rubber ducking the problem I'm trying to solve and coming up with the solution myself (which generally results in a much better understanding of the problem)
I have also considered minimal linux distros but realize that it's not going to be much better than my kindle fire.
For editing, I would still use my kindle fire.
I use a custom gulp-based build process from markdown files that I wrote which spits out manuscript format, and the NEO works fine with that. Of course it can only hold 9 scenes at once.
Now if I only knew where to get antiglare screen protection that actually works. I renewed it recently and the new one is not anti-glare at all. :/
And it's a fun exercise to take this user's need and whiteboard out a new product for them. How are those ergonomics; could we hinge the display or project it somehow in a way that will let them type longer without discomfort? How's that LCD's readability; would eink be better? Should the device be doing incremental backups to the cloud? Should it offer dictation?
I think one of the key features would be no network connection.
It's my go-to for focus.
The send button is really cool. It turns it into an HID device and spews a stream of characters out over USB. It would be pretty easy and pretty cool to make a tiny little usb device that can accept that stream every time you hit 'SEND' and append it to a file on a... more robust system.
Maybe BTLE and an app on your phone for sync/backup would be an option? If I were using such a gadget, I'd really appreciate unobtrusive and just-works-ish features to make sure I don't lose what I've written.
Small, Z80 based, with a few lines of text on the screen and powered by AA batteries. Other journalists used to laugh at the 'old guy with the Fisher Price computer', but the instant-on and distraction free typing was a definite advantage. Pretty nice not having to worry about a fragile, expensive laptop while out in the jungle or whatever, too.
I'm kinda nostalgic for that less connected era, where life moved at a slightly slower pace. Like all nostalgia, I'm leaving out the bad parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
Our students reporters had to take notes on paper.
In the early 90s dedicated word processing machines seemed to be pretty popular and writing papers with small lcd screens was common.
I guess this is better than "you don't have an account, no article for you!" but it still strikes me as odd.
These also have a mode where it just "types" the text into the program of your choice, via the usb cable. No drivers required and works with any OS that can recognize a usb keyboard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
It's a raspberry Pi, with an e-ink screen, and battery to provide an 'offline' repository of information, including Wikipedia.
It runs PalmOS!
Nice to know my crappy code is still causing problems all these years later.