If you missed PART I, here it is: QUEST FOR THE PERFECT WRITING MACHINE – PART I…

Updated FREEWRITE with Shakespeare screen saver.

I got my Freewrite and have been taking turns comparing the 3.3 functional ‘distraction-free’ writing units: Freewrite  by Astrohaus, my Acer Aspire V5 with no wifi, and my Alphasmarts: Dana ‘wireless’ and a couple NEO2s. I also got my Lenovo Thinkpad [More info on this one and its previous resurrection here.] back up and running from it’s $4.97 fantasrophe. Fixing it was cheap, but taking the time to do it and ordering the part took 9 months. Love it compared to my school district Dell.

FREEWRITE – Interesting review from The Atlantic.

Here are the notes I typed on the Freewrite, the damn thing was glowing a vision of Isaac Asimov when I opened the box.

Issaac Asimov greats me from tjhe box., The keys are funky. very much like my old school typrewriter. Noisy. Definitely noisy. Itr's cute and quirky. Ready for stickers, customization. Is it hipster? Probably yes. It's retro, I feel like writng some mid 20th centruy pulp FantSciFi. Stuff like Flash Gordon, The Lensmen, Burrough's Barsoom.

The weirdest thing was when I opened the box it was on! Seriously, how did they pull that off, or was it a random weirdness for me alone? Is this the vehicle for my next novel? For the future? Or is it just another whimsical thing that I better get tired of quick, because the promise ismore than the reality?

It feels sturdy. ANd the clackity, clack of the keyboard certainly makes you feel like you're producing something.

It is disturbingly noisy. You can hear the damn springs moving. It doesn’t feel as solid as an old Selectric and it doesn’t have as good a feel as the old IBM desktop keyboards. And it’s still pretty damn heavy.

Astrohaus calls it “The worlds first smart typewriter.” I’d say it’s only slightly smarter than a typewriter, certainly not smart until it fixes my stupid typos without having to run spell check once I transfer it to my word processor. For emphasis: There is NO EDITING other than backspace and rewrite. I type on it with my eyes closed, literally blind, not looking at the screen. For plain old production this may be good, but look at the mess up above.

At the moment I am regretting the purchase. But I think I’ll hang onto it for at least the first firmware update. We’ll see if that, and some more time with the keyboard makes me grow more fond.

Note: I got the first firmware update. Shakespeare Screensaver is cool. Good update, but alas, not worth the investment for this writer. I listed it on Ebay and sold it for more than I bought it for. Not really expecting that. The buyer is very excited. I’m happy.

Alphasmart Dana Wireless and NEO2

So I picked up a Dana Wireless for less than $30 including shipping. It came, but was missing a space bar. They refunded my $ instantly and I ordered another one from the same buyer. So for $30 I have one and parts. In a flashback to my eBay addiction days, I then purchased four NEO2s for $55 (And immediately sold one to a student for my cost.). I had tried an Alphasmart 3000 and owned the Alphasmart Pro (No idea where that went) a decade or two ago. They ran forever on a set of batteries and I remember I even converted the Alphasmart Pro to a Dvorak keyboard and learned to touch type that.

But back to the usability study. The NEO2 is more like “The worlds first smart typewriter.” And the cutest thing is the ease with which one can transfer to a PC. Hook it up to a USB cable, open your word processor and hit send. Then watch it type into the document.

The Dana seems to have problems with the software. It doesn’t always boot. I ‘fixed’ the first one without a space bar using a space bar from one of the NEO2s, I purchased. So, now I have two Dana’s and four NEO2s. This nice thing about the Dana is that it uses SD cards, the older ones I bought for my camera that don’t store much. The ones that for data storage & transfer are measured in megabytes mostly, though one 2G microSD works. Still the hassle of changing batteries and then the machine not always booting is pretty annoying. I’m going to research to see if it has a replaceable system battery and already purchased some solderable AA rechargeables to see if that fixes the issue.

This weekend I’m going hiking and I’m taking the NEO2. I’ll report back later.

Apple Newton eMate 300

I also charged up and turned on my Apple eMate. The screen spring is still toast, but it seems to work fine. Battery pack is dead and I’m not sure how I would transfer files easily… Oh, no. More distractions. Just ordered some new NiMH tabbed AAs and a compact flash adapter.  I’m hoping I can use  the same SD cards I’ve got in the Dana. Update: The compact flash to SD adapter does not work. If not, the file transfer may make this cool machine more trouble than it’s worth.

More later including the HP Jornada, a pocket P.C. and my Acer Aspire V5 with no working WiFi. I’ll also give an update on how well the NEO2 behaves out in the wilderness. You can read about it here: QUEST FOR THE PERFECT WRITING MACHINE – PART III.