The thread for all the many pointless gadgets we don’t really need.
The Freewrite: billed as the “World’s First Smart Typewriter”. It is an e-ink display typewriter with built in wifi-cloud uploading and mechanical keyboard. Pure hipster. $500 dollars. Is distraction free first-draft typing (virtually no editing) worth $500?
The alternative:
The Alphasmart Neo 2. No longer manufactured, $25-$50 on ebay. Regarded by everyone (apparently) as the superior product. Apparently a holdover product from some educational lineup that has been repurposed in a technology saturated world into a distraction-free typewriter.
The second alternative:
Full screen apps. I mean, you know, any typing program that does full screen.
I’m going to treat this as the random vaguely tech-oriented shit I nonsensically bought off Amazon for no reason because I live a privileged sheltered life thread.
From an article on a food blog. SO much better than your regular trash tongs! I actually stand behind this purchase. And when people visit, I tell them I had a GIANT splinter then pull out these bad boys and they chuckle a little bit, like they’re humoring me. But I know it’s funny.
I mean, how could you not buy this for $18? Don’t you want to know what temperature your stuff is? When I got it several months ago I spent a good 10 minutes pointing it at various areas and objects in my apartment, then I put it in a drawer where it has been sitting ever since.
Not necessarily. Pointless isn’t quite complete overlapping venn diagram of gadget. I understand gadget to be “things i don’t really need” rather than “things that are pointless”. Do you need a distraction free keyboard for $500? No. Would it be kind of cool to have one? Yeeeaaaaa… probably.
The freewrite was made by a high school classmate of mine! Pretty cool success story for him. Niche product for sure but he has a lot of really happy customers.
The whole point of these retro word processing devices is to remove all distractions. The “lot more” aspect of a laptop or Chromebook is exactly what these users are trying to compartmentalize themselves away from.
I get it, but with some minimal effort you can do something similar with a laptop. There are distraction-free typing apps (blank screen, you set the background color, and you can even make it sound like a typewriter) and you can get an app that shuts off your internet for a preset period of time. You just have to have the willpower to turn it on, set the timer, and then know you can’t surf without rebooting until the timer is up.
Also, these people sitting cross-legged in the grass typing on this thing, I bet they have their smartphones on them. The internet is just a couple of taps away.
It turns out it’s a scam, though. They created a full scale mockup, and that’s as far as they got I guess. I don’t think I’d want one driving over me if I had a truck or SUV.
The Freewrite has a sequel, a more laptop-y, fold-y thing meant to be carried around. Less typewriter and more typing accessory.
I might pre order one for fun, though i’m not sure how useful it would be to me. The way i write makes Scrivener almost the perfect software. It might be good for poetry.
I’m not really a gun guy (although I do own a couple of handguns from my more paranoid younger years), but I thought this was cool. Apparently miniature guns have been around a long time.
