Comment by ZeroConcerns 2 days ago
Yeah, 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...
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.
Unihertz Titan 2 https://www.unihertz.com/ Which I plan on buying next when iPhone dies.
Those don’t have physical keyboards, and all run Android which rules them out. I also prefer old school greyscale LCDs to e-ink, as e-ink has issues with ghosting and slow refresh.
The closest modern device is the Planet Computers PDA, which can run Linux, but it can’t run mainline Linux and it has a modern color screen that uses too much power.
I was going to mention Planet before I saw your follow-up comment. I bought their Gemini, and it seemed interesting for a while, but being a phone with a keyboard, still effectively a phone, battery life wasn't great and again a phone, my default was never to shut it down, and it would always be out of juice if not used for a while. Eventually it outdated itself sitting in a drawer; just didn't feel right. The external notification screen seemed like a good idea but too clunky for general use, and then the awkward fingerprint sensor position and accidentally touching things when opening / closing. I was actually considering it during my post-BlackBerry withdrawal period, but it just didn't cut it, and while it had the roots behind it and some seemingly nice productivity software, a Psion it just wasn't.
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.
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?