List here: https://kadavy.net/distraction-free-writing-devices/
To me, YAGNI.
Let me suggest two cheaper alternatives (battletested by me):
1. Fountain pen and a nice notebook with nice paper (Mnemosyne, or Rhodia)
2. A foldable Bluetooth butterfly keyboard ($43 on Amazon) paired to an old tablet (I have an old iPad Air 2) with Wifi turned off and no apps except a writing app. Google Docs works in offline mode! (this is what I use in cafes when I’m traveling). I recommend a Samsers keyboard. This is what I have:
I love good typography and I just can’t with these distraction free devices. The iPad Air 2 has a retina screen that displays beautiful typography.
Forget e-ink devices — they might sound like a good idea at first, but their refresh rate is slow enough to be annoying.
If you don’t need portability, an old DOS PC running Wordstar or WordPerfect is also distraction free. I used to write long articles for my school newsletter using nothing but Wordstar.
E-ink is slow and is hard to read because of the low contrast. And contrary to all the marketing it actually increased eyestrain for me because it's so dark.
Not to mention the software on all the tablets I had was severely lacking, slow and buggy, and the subscriptions tacked on top felt outright offensive to me.
1. I'd go one further and say the nice paper notebooks and pens haven't worked for me either. Instead I just use a free A5 paper notepad and pen I have laying around.
2. Agreed with iPad + keyboard as an actual alternative. The retina 120Hz screens of the Pro models really help. Reading PDFs is a joy, even when compared to a large A4 e-ink device I had. It's just so much faster on the iPad.
Although I use it with Wifi on, I don't have many apps installed on it and basically all notifications disabled. I'm in the iOS ecosystem so everything just syncs, which means less work and mental overhead organizing my notes and reminders.
I'd recommend the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard though, it's expensive but snaps in place and feels great.
Spending money is overrated. The pen at the back of your junk drawer from a hotel you don’t remember staying at will do just fine. There’s a notebook in there too that’s as good as new if you just rip out the first page.
Vehemently disagree! Few things hurt on my nerves more than a pen that leaves ink spots behind, or works intermittently, or needs excessive pressure on the paper...
Like George R. R. Martin? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7744952)
There is a special place in hell for people who make hardware that runs static software, but still withhold ownership just so they can indefinitely bilk money from you.
Or just stop supporting altogether, a la Spotify Car Thing.
I know the idea is to be distraction-free but it’s hard to justify over a basic writing app on the phone you already own, which includes a nicer screen.
In the video they show the 3 text size modes. The smallest text size only shows 8 lines, even though the text on the screen claims it goes to 11: https://youtu.be/5hV8xfhdk7c?t=208 (3:28) I can't imagine 15 lines of text on a low resolution screen like that.
I like the concept of the device, but I must not be the target audience at all. I can't imagine spending time writing on a low-resolution, tiny LCD display like that for any extended period of time.
Even the response time of the LCD looks painfully slow in the video. The letters slowly fade into view as they're being typed. They only show the typing for a couple seconds so if you blink you'll miss it in the demo video. This is in contrast to the campaign's claims of zero latency and high responsiveness
Apparently there's a market for it, though, because they have a lot of Kickstarter backers.
Not seeing the case for spending $175 and only getting half a word processor. If portability was the goal, an external keyboard goes against that. If the goal was better ergonomics, the screen wouldn't be the size and shape of a table tent. So... why?
I have working keyboards in my possession that this thing cannot connect to.
- No ADB port for a Mac keyboard
- No Sun Type 5 Mini-DIN
- No PS/2 port
- No PC keyboard port
- No Newton serial keyboard port
- No RJ11 for an LK-201
So much for universal.
[1] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/pc-hardware-in/05960051...
Do you have any interesting layout and language variations?
The most interesting thing about them is the range of variability in quality. Some of that is survivorship bias, but I think it's remarkable that the Newton MP2000's keyboard works at all -- as far as Apple products go, it looks like a product of the middle Mac age but feels like the worst membrane HP ever shipped with their bottom-range consumer PCs.
My main gripe with the freewrite (and to a lesser extent, this option) is the whole cloud/app/document management offering. I get that those features are important to several people, but I am happy to pull data from the device on occasion, or to back things up via git myself. Having to lock in to some vendor's cloud thing without any alternative is an instant way to make a device untenable for me personally.
I had a Laser PC4 in the early 90s: https://oldcomputermuseum.com/laser_pc4.html
I wish I still had it just to noodle around on.
I picked up a Cambridge Z88 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88) at a Goodwill a couple years ago but haven't done much of anything with it. Apparently they have quite the following.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
Those Alphas were the upgrades. Fancy!
Devices without fast refresh or a large enough screen are unsuitable for many of today’s writers except for the very few who write linearly (streams of consciousness).
A word processor is a tool of thought. You need to be able to manipulate thoughts easily in it. Small devices don’t serve this purpose well.
If I had more experience in making stuff like this (and money to buy the components and other tools I’ll need to make it), as soon as I saw the price of this thing I would have started making my own clone right away and thrown the code and hardware specs on GitHub.
• buy a ball-head typewriter. Very satisfying to write on. And you get to see your text on paper right away.
• modify it to have a USB interface
• setup a Pi Pico to log all text entered on the typewrite
• when you connect the Pi Pico to your PC it replays the entered text at high speed.
This is a "solution" looking for a problem.
But it's another screen. There will be other distracting screens, if only a smartphone screen.
We have just moved the problem into hardware.
Raspberrypi zero 2w + some stripped down OS that boots directly to an editor, lcd display and a nice case would be much cheaper. Also easier to implement other stuff, like different fonts, use your own 'cloud' to sync stuff (and not being forced into a subscription), etc.
At some point you ask yourself if it's worth it, and in both cases, for me, it isn't.
https://goat-story.com/collections/coffee-mugs/products/goat...
I guess if you want something like this but don’t have time to build it it could be worth $100
Which is already in the chromebook price teritory
ASUS E410 is $159 currently on Bezos' website.
https://www.google.com/search?q=coolest+coolerSo for the same price, I either get some small gadget that is horrible to actually use (just try scrolling through tens of pages on this), or a full featured laptop (yes, performane-wise it sucks, but less than the gadget) and just run gEdit fullscreen. Keyboard included.