I have no idea how such a shitty product can exist. Same price buys you a Chromebook; there are plenty of software libre distraction-free writing apps out there (try opening a terminal and typing "vim"?).
Or you could chicken out and buy a Kindle Fire Max 11 with keyboard case for the same price.
Both of these let you type for more than a day on a charge: the only benefit of the freewrite alpha is an 80 hour battery, which is pointless with USB-C charging everywhere.
@cstross some #TechIlliterate even recommended this shit to me instead if a #Laptop when I was in school.
I told them unless it comes with the same #TTS voice as #StevenHawking has I don't want them to ever be allowed to make any technical decision or suggestion in their life!
Those things are like #TexasInstruments#calculators: an absolute #ripoff given even the shittiest #Netbook with the abundant #Intel#Z3735F#SoC running #OS1337 is more versatile.
And I literally just started that distro.
@cstross At least expensive fountain pens are pretty to look at. (Speaking of ways to separate writers from their money.)
A bit of context.
In University, I discovered fountain pens, and briefly fell in love with them.
My mom, born 1935, had no romanticism wrt pens. She had grown up with inkwells in school. To her, cheap ballpoints were like penicillin. Why would any fool want to go back to status quo ante?
@trollball I believe it started with the Hemingwrite, which was a labour of love by enthusiasts ... in 2014. Renamed Freewrite, then turned into a licensing/marketing grift, discovered that Alphasmart were out of business and decided to extend tentacles into that market (but not the cheapo education models designed for kids to beat up) ...
/2 I am PARTICULARLY amused by the last item on that list, The Field Desk, yours for only $1850! ... because it's a poor quality knock-off of a Victorian escritoire (writing box), with a shoulder strap and handle. I own a really nice escritoire, probably 1880 vintage: mahogany and brass, not cherry wood and brass, but I paid £100 for it.
@cstross I would gladly pay 100-200 £ for a portable writing desk. And since Victorians actually used such items, I assume it would have the bugs worked out of the design, if you will.
@trollball They're all over ebay in the UK. Your search terms are escritoire and "writing slope". Be warned, quality varies! The best end up in antique shops.
@cstross Man, and I felt self indulgent for buying a cheap laptop for $100 for the express purpose of 'just writing '. It's a long battery life glorified keyboard with a screen and just grimly does it's job.
@cstross The impulse toward these monotasker word processors seems like an allomorph of the impulse toward old typewriters, which is also A Thing among the Youth of Today.
It does seem these guys are leaving room for a competitor to undercut them, if there’s that much of a market. Seems like you could sell a device with a really nice keyboard, 4x80 display, and Arduino for ~USD100.
@adamrice Nah, you need to clone the Cambridge Z88 (Sir Clive Sinclair's last computer venture, circa 1988) only using Raspberry Pi hardware (because British) and make it thinner and lighter (the thing was amazingly small by 1988 standards; today it's thicker and heavier than a 13" Macbook Air, and doesn't run for as long off 4 AA cells).
@cstross@adamrice I was surprised the Z88 didn't have a bigger impact - did it arrive too late, were there issues in production or was it underpowered compared to competition?
@geoglyphentropy@adamrice It suffered shipping delays (I think it was about 6-9 months late?) and there was no follow-through. However, anecdotally, it pointed John Sculley at what was to become the Newton when he attended a management meeting at Apple and realized nearly everyone at the table was taking notes on a Z88—the use case for a PDA was so blindingly obvious he decided to go for it. So ... great-great-great-to-the-nth-ancestor of Android and iOS, maybe?
The hell? "Word processors" were a thing back in the 1960s, dedicated single-use computers that everyone dropped in the 80s because, you know, "single use."
This looks like some weird nostalgia trip.
Next up, someone's going to offer an IoT Pet Rock™ you can't lose.
@ovid Oh boy, you really need to google for the Freewrite and it's predecessors. Started as an attempt to build a manual typewriter work-alike, only with cloud storage. Turns out there's a cult following for this sort of idiocy.
(There was a thing in the 90s in Japan for portable word processors with fold-up keyboards you could slip in a suit pocket and power off a pair of AA cells for a day or two, but they never caught on outside and touchscreens were better for kanji/katakana.)
I just discovered that there's a USB adapter for a manual typewriter to read the pistons and levers and plug in to your computer as an utterly insane mechanical keyboard.
They have dozens of variations for different makes and models of 1930s Underwoods and things.
A manual typewriter with cloud storage? Given that I learned to type in the 80s on a manual, I now feel the pull! This sounds like a hugely fun hobby project, but as a consumer gadget, uh, no.
But still, the description makes my socks roll up and down! (Off to search for Freewrite)
@cstross I have the device whose nostalgia they're trying to cash in on. LCD screen, runs for literal years on 3 AAA batteries, and emulates a USB keyboard for transfer to computer.
(I will THROW MONEY at someone who does for the Cambridge Z88 what the Spectrum Next crew did for the Speccy. Make it thinner, e-ink display if possible, CPU should be a Raspberry Pi Zero W2 or better, port Pipedream to it but run Linux under the hood, etc. Oh, and keep the membrane keyboard but aim to match the positive key feel of the (waterproof) Z88 one. Yes?)
This thing is a stupid keyboard with a memory buffer. The end.
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