alt Hacker NewsYeah, lovely... But can we please stop retconning obsolete technology into something to strive for? The Epson, Tandy, Psion and Nokia almost-like-a-laptop systems of the time were pretty neat, but not magic.
Really: you could lock me into a room with just a pencil and a ream of blank sheets, and nothing of value would come out, and that's not because of the technology or the distractions, but just... well...
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This is tempting.
I fairly frequently leave my phone in the office and take a clipboard full of lined paper and a ballpoint to a place where I can write without access to the internet - I've got a number of published CS papers and at least one funded grant where a significant amount of writing was done in longhand on paper.
Of course this would require a bit of software work and maybe a brain swap to make it into the sort of portable typewriter that I'm really looking for, but given this as a starting point it should be fairly easy.
One question I have - what is the finished weight?
To each their own. If there were a Psion that supported modern email, calendar, and task standards, with wifi sync, I would carry it most days. I basically never make phone calls anymore, and I always found the old greyscale LCDs to be very legible.
Caveat: such a device should not be infested with shitty spyware like everything else these days.
Fun and nostalgia IS value! Same as minimalism.
It's fun to push old hardware to the limits and develop software/hw for it (such us wifi for apple 2 from 1979 hehe)
Clunky hardware has one advantage too: It's usually a single tasking tool. Great for focus and running away from WWW.
Your kid can play pac-man and Tetris without fear of popups, credit cards, scams, hate and porn.
I know a few people who would love a device that gave them only the things they need and none of the rest. A great keyboard, enough room for writing.
I use an iPad with a keyboard when I need this kind of “writing room” thing, but I know someone who uses an ancient electronic typewriter.
FWIW when my disorganisation is catastrophic, I go out for a walk, leave my phone at home if I can, sit on a bench, and try to organise my life in one side of A4. And then if there’s a task that I can start by writing, I do it there, with a pen.