I own a neo2. They are nice for first drafts or noodling with words. There really is something in the idea of dumbing down tech to get things done. I have written quite a bit on it but three things have held me back from being a power user:
1. It uses a dated, proprietary cable to transfer your writing to a computer. Worst part of this is that the AlphaSmart re-types your writing so if you’ve written the 50000 word max then it will take some time to save it. The process is just annoying enough to trigger procrastination.
2. If the battery comes out then you’ve lost everything. This isn’t such a dealbreaker since I want a dumber word processor to get out of my way but I think it makes the keyboard a little too dumb.
3. Honestly, it’s not sexy. It’s huge, too. And people with no interest in writing just don’t get it at all. The looks people give me when I’ve used it in the public are like “what insane Jesus cult stuff is this guy writing on that??” Nothing crazy here, just hunting bugs on TempleOS.
I see a market for a machine like this but done better. The just write or whatever branding they are using checks a lot of boxes but the price is insane.
I think I’ll just rig up Atom to work a little bit more like Scrivener.
Yeah these are the guys I was referring to when I wrote Just Write. Their prices are still insane. Plus are they ever going to release the traveller? I’m pretty sure it’s been listed as presale for 2 years now. My neo2 was $40 CDN with shipping. Paying like 20x that for something which is just a tad bit nicer is kind of wrong. You’ve either got to be a working novelist to justify the cost or like someone whose been sitting on the same handful of story premises for 20 years but never finished anything you know like I’m gonna throw down $700 on this thing because I’m actually really very serious this time about writing a book. No thanks. Laptop will do here.
It was called the Hemingwrite when they first did the kickstarter. They've since done a laptop-style version. I have the original from the kickstarter and I enjoy it.
1. It uses a dated, proprietary cable to transfer your writing to a computer. Worst part of this is that the AlphaSmart re-types your writing so if you’ve written the 50000 word max then it will take some time to save it. The process is just annoying enough to trigger procrastination.
2. If the battery comes out then you’ve lost everything. This isn’t such a dealbreaker since I want a dumber word processor to get out of my way but I think it makes the keyboard a little too dumb.
3. Honestly, it’s not sexy. It’s huge, too. And people with no interest in writing just don’t get it at all. The looks people give me when I’ve used it in the public are like “what insane Jesus cult stuff is this guy writing on that??” Nothing crazy here, just hunting bugs on TempleOS.
I see a market for a machine like this but done better. The just write or whatever branding they are using checks a lot of boxes but the price is insane.
I think I’ll just rig up Atom to work a little bit more like Scrivener.