A reviewer at The Verge says a two-device distraction-free substitute for old word processors is worth nearly $900

[highplainsdem]

The review is here: https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/837877/remarkable-paper-pro-type-folio-marker-plus-favorite

About a year ago, we said you probably don’t need the Remarkable Paper Pro. The e-ink device is equal parts outrageous and luxurious; it’s not ideal for consuming books, and the screen can sometimes feel painfully slow. Then there’s the starting price, which is, quite frankly, ludicrous at $629 (up from $579 thanks to US-induced tariffs). Add in the $229 Type Folio, and holy hell.

Based on that description, most sane people would stay far, far away, and maybe spend their money on, I don’t know, Apple’s latest MacBook Air. We’ve seen Apple’s laptop drop down to as low as $738, making it the more affordable option against the combined price of the Remarkable Paper Pro and Type Folio keyboard case.

And yet, I not only bought the Paper Pro, but it’s the device I find myself reaching for most often when I want to GTD, like write this blog. Not because it’s the best tablet — it’s not — but because it’s a stubbornly single-purpose device. That’s a good thing!

While using it, I’m insulated from a world that’s constantly demanding my attention. There is no Slack app. I can’t doomscroll. There are exactly zero notifications. And instead of hitting me with AI and algorithms, it just sits there, quietly, inviting actual human thought and curation.

-snip-

Actual human thought and curation...

What a concept, compared to what tech companies bombard us with.

I'll admit there are days I miss typewriters...though I don't miss having to retype to get a clean copy.

And when I read some time ago that George RR Martin still uses WordStar to write, on a computer never connected to the internet, I felt rather wistful. My computers that could use WordStar died long ago. And they were also a lot more expensive, especially with their prices adjusted for decades of inflation, than the new devices in that Verge review.

Btw, the article where I read that George was still using WordStar was already a few years old when I ran across it. I don't know if he still uses it.

But there's a lot to be said for being distraction-free...

[yardwork]

1. WordStar had some very useful features.

[Johonny]

2. These days I write in Goggle docs

I can write on my phone at lunch, clean it up at home at night.

[MiHale]

3. Since we've retired...

Which was about 14 years ago…we’ve used iPads exclusively. The old pads are recycled into different uses, I use one for a music server, one for notes, journals, writing. I take the pad and delete everything but what need. I do keep the notes one connected to the cloud for backup. Thats it.
The pads we retire are usually due to bad battery life or the home button wore out. I’ve replaced a couple batteries and there are workarounds for the home button.

[usonian]

4. Dear Benjamin ...

[hunter]

5. I have multiple computers I use for different purposes...

... mostly old laptops diverted from the e-waste stream.

All my writing is done using simple text editors in markdown.

I do programming and graphics stuff on my desktop machine. I do raspberry pi stuff on my raspberry pi.

I read ebooks on my kobo.

I don't have a smart phone.

I'm writing this on my news/doom scrolling machine of endless distractions.

[MineralMan]

6. As someone who made my living as a writer, I can't agree.

When I began my career, I wrote on a late 1940s Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter. I have always hated retyping things, so I soon learned to compose what I was writing in my head before committing to paper. I also learned to type almost error-free copy. As I wrote, I read the words on the paper as they appeared. When I made a mistake, I used correction tape to correct the error.

I was overjoyed, in 1986, when I first got a PC clone and started writing with Microsoft Word 1.0 for DOS. Correcting my work was so much easier, whether I made corrections as I wrote or when I re-read the material. I loved it. I still wrote the same way, composing paragraph after paragraph in my head before typing the words. I had an outline in my head as well, along with knowing how long the document I was writing needed to be.

As word processing software improved, I added other features to my writing strategy. I created shortcuts for typing frequently used phrases. Microsoft Word let me do that, every easily. I could type three letters and then press the space bar and an entire phrase would magically appear.

But, the PC also gave me instant access to information, once the Internet existed. At any time, I could press Alt-Tab to switch the screen to my browser, where I could access the answer to just about any question I needed to ask. I learned which sources were likely to be accurate.

All of this save time, and time is money when you write as a profession. The PC helped me write more in less time. A genius invention.

When I first got the PC and started writing in word processing software, I still had to submit manuscripts that were neatly printed, double-spaced, and formatted to suit the publication I was writing for. For publications, the length of the piece was a key factor. One of the reasons I was successful as a freelance writer was my ability to turn in error-free copy that was written to fit the available space precisely.

Editors hated dot-matrix printers, so I had to buy a daisy-wheel impact printer. Giving editors what they wanted was another key reason for my success.

So, on-screen editing, access to information on the same device, and blazing fast keyboarding were all critical factors in making a good living as a magazine journalist. Anything that helped me do that was just fine with me. That's what mattered. Giving the publications exactly what they wanted in exactly the way they wanted it was the key to success.

So, I loved the improvements made and adopted them ASAP. I never longed to go back to the organic pleasures of typing on a primitive typewriter. Never. Not even for a second.

[hunter]

14. My first word processor was vi on a BSD terminal.

That and T_EX were pretty magical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_%28text_editor%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX

After that I used Paperclip for the Atari 800

As I recall, Orson Scott Card was an Atari guy in the beginning.

Jerry Pournelle was one of the earliest authors to use a word processor. The machine he used is in the Smithsonian. I used to argue with him online, probably when he wasn't sober enough to ignore a gadfly like me. We did have a few polite interactions after he'd quit drinking and I'd grown up to be responsible married adult with children.

I've never used Microsoft Word on my own computers.

[MineralMan]

17. I was the word processing reviewer and columnist for PC World for 12 years.

So, I had every word processor that ran on PCs on my computer all the time. I learned them all. Once a year, the magazine did a round-up comparison of all of them. The competition was a was a big deal in the late 80s through the early 2000s, but Word ended up winning that war. For my personal use, I preferred something else, but most of the reader questions that came in were for Word, so...

I chatted with Jerry Pournelle ever year in the press room at COMDEX. Mostly, though, about science fiction, my favorite reading genre. He always had an entourage at COMDEX. His problem with drinking got in the way of that relationship, though, for me.

These days, I'm using Word for Windows 16. I no longer get copies of the latest releases, and it has all the tools I could ever use, and more. I don't write for a living any longer, so I don't need even 10% of its features.

Those were exciting times in the personal computing field.

[usonian]

19. Before you tipped me off, I was going to ask if you are Jerry Pournelle.

I built a CP/M computer and got copies of wordmaster and wordstar. It was fun, being a real pioneer.

But lately, straight text is all I use, not even markdown, which still confuses me (and I used LaTeX some years back)

I watched Jerry go from writer to software and hardware reviewer, and sensed regret that "men have become the tools of their tools" ... Thoreau

Users at Berkeley asked me to install foreign fonts, which was fun because the donated workstations had from 8 to 16 megabytes of memory, and disks were typically 105 megabytes. I had to share operating system files from the file server just to cram the OS into them. My memory may be weak but theirs is gone.

Here's a fun bit.

[highplainsdem]

21. Jerry passed away 8 years ago.

[MineralMan]

26. Yup. I'm still here, though...

[hunter]

30. Pournelle started writing on a personal computer using a program called Electric Pencil...

... on a computer named Ezekiel with a 1 MHz Z-80, 64k RAM, and an eight inch floppy drive that cost altogether $12,000, or about $54,000 in today's money.

Word processing on a personal computer was not cheap. ( Back then I had $600 in the bank, a car with a tank full of gas, a university computer account, and thought I was rich. )

Now I'm writing this on a laptop that was someone else's e-waste. It's got four microprocessors running at over 1 GHz, 8 Gigabytes RAM, and 192 Gigabytes storage.

For the curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Pencil

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-10-27-tm-13029-story.html

[highplainsdem]

22. It's usually a very bad idea to be drunk online (or offline, for that matter). Jerry was very bright and

very well-educated. Bonkers politically, of course, and not as good a debater as he thought he was - plus online he didn't have the advantage of being physically imposing, which probably helped him win some arguments offline. He could also be extremely nice, even charming. People dealing with him when he was online and drinking probably saw him at his worst.

[MineralMan]

28. Jerry had a genius IQ.

If you got him away from his fan club and got him talking about just about anything, he was a great conversationalist.

His politics were odd, at least. Best avoided. I had read most of his sci-fi novels, and his collaborations with Niven were some of my favorites.

I wouldn't say I knew him, but he was an interesting man.

[highplainsdem]

20. Never had a dot-matrix or daisy-wheel printer. (Really hated dot-matrix.) The first printer I bought was

a laser jet, which was over a thousand dollars (equivalent to over three thousand today). I'd used a friend's laser jet printer before that.

[Hugin]

7. I have a device that's a competitor to the Remarkable Paper Pro...

I also have a high end passive capture tablet which uses a thin magnet placed around the pen/pencil of my choice while I write/draw/doodle on a paper type that I am using. Which is my favorite, but it has the downside of only accepting a single sheet at a time. With it I can cast to a screen/computer via Bluetooth/USB/memory card an image in progress or an animation of the creation of an image as it was produced. With the infinite settings, I can easily completely capture the nuances of each writing implement down to the tilt of the point as I write. So I suppose calligraphy would be possible. It also does color which none of the eInk devices does to my knowledge.

It’s in a word, amazing.

As to my eInk device. I like and use it quite often. It’s as wonderful as the author describes. Although it has a calendar, I really do wish that it had a clock.

Both of them cost a combined $700.

[Celerity]

8. Cult Sci-Fi author repackages WordStar 7 DOS -- 680MB zip has software, emulators, manuals, and tips squished in

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/cult-sci-fi-author-repackages-wordstar-7-dos-680mb-zip-has-software-emulators-manuals-and-tips-squished-in



Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer, Robert J. Sawyer, has painstakingly packaged a distribution of WordStar 7.0d for DOS. Sawyer says he spent weeks of his time crafting this full install of the seminal word processor, making it possible to be “up and running on a Windows computer in a matter of minutes.” In addition to the software, the Canadian author includes a full-text searchable PDF of all seven manuals that originally came with the word processor, his hints and tips, and more. All 25 of Sawyer’s novels are said to have been written using WordStar, efficiently aided by the program’s keyboard-centric UI.

For our younger readers, WordStar for DOS was last updated in 1992, and is currently classed by some as ‘abandonware.’ Though the DOS edition of the software was indeed abandoned, there have been several changes of ownership of the publishing company, numerous WordStar releases for more modern platforms like Windows, and a handful of clones trying to keep the WordStar flame burning on modern platforms. In other words, Sawyer's characterization of WordStar for DOS as abandonware isn't a legal one.

It might be hard to fathom the appeal of this old word processor, but many authors have been known to be WordStar devotees. As well as Sawyer, literary luminaries such as George R.R. Martin, Anne Rice, and Arthur C. Clarke are/were WordStar torchbearers.

These older authors probably first tasted the delights of word processing on machines packing a copy of WordStar. So, it is understandable that the first-learned, muscle-memory enhanced, keyboard shortcut-packed software would be engrained as a favorite. Sawyer, who spent so much time on this re-packaged version, says there should be “a monument to this, the finest word-processing program ever created.” He also quotes Anne Rice, who said that WordStar was “magnificent,” and contrasted starkly with the “pure madness” of Microsoft Word.

snip

[Hugin]

10. The real scary nerds used...

MicroEMACS.

I kept a version of that alive for forty years. Until the last sticking plaster encrusted glasses wearing, high water pantsed, and pocket protector sporting nerdling showed up with the big sad doe eyes wanting their precious to run on the latest cyberthingie.

THAT’S when I really realized that the world had changed.

[highplainsdem]

23. Thanks, Celerity!

[Fichefinder]

9. WPS Office is free and works great.

[Prairie_Seagull]

11. Hmmm, less is more.

Wouldn't surprise me one bit to see more of this.

Do 'they' even make an 'air gapped' computer these days?

[Hugin]

12. Yes, indeed 'they' do!

Available in the school supplies section of the average grocery store. In all of their seven segment ten digit glory. Most with memory!

Just lurking there capable of putting the next human on the Moon.

So under appreciated.

[Prairie_Seagull]

13. Thanks Hugin.

Both of my good laptops were not designed with this in mind. As I recall the very fist screen was a prompt to go on-line and download an update.

[Hugin]

15. Been there...

My hopelessly outdated contacts list has been successfully synced to the thermostat, refrigerator, and credenza.

I feel your pain.

[RubyRose]

16. I miss Word Perfect but mostly Interleaf which we

Used for documentation at work.

[Sympthsical]

24. A little self-control works, too

I use a Kindle Fire to read. There's often a deal on them when they upgrade generations, and the last one I got was $70 last year. Yes, you can load apps on it, but I don't. Just load books and school textbooks on it. I may download movies or whatever for travel, but mostly it's just books.

I use a Windows PC for work and am never bombarded by ads. All notifications are turned off. Simple ad blockers exist. Phones have notification options if I need quiet. It sounds like the writer had a problem feeling like he has to be connected all of the time for some reason and needed an external support to cut off the impulse. I'm not judging that - we all need to do what works for us - but there are cheaper options to achieve quiet.

Not that I'm in a position to judge. I just spent $1900 on a new gaming PC on cyber Monday, so . . .

[Sympthsical]

27. I really held out

I've been using a potato from Amazon I got a few years ago for, like, $500 when my last gaming PC quit, so this is the first true "gaming" rig I've bought in 13 or so years. I won't get into the nitty gritty of the specs. But its foundation:

Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 Processor 265K 8P + 12E 3.9GHz [Turbo 5.5GHz] 30MB Cache LGA1851
GeForce RTX™ 5070 12GB GDDR7 Video Card (DLSS 4.0)
2 TB HD, 32GB Ram

Then all this other crap like liquid cooling, etc. I could've brought the price down a little bit. It comes with a gaming keyboard and mouse I don't need - didn't notice that when I was customizing. And it came with a 24" free gaming monitor for cyber Monday. Which I also kind of don't need. But still neat.

I intend for it to last 8-10 years. I'm a very frugal person ordinarily, but I want to play games like Borderlands 4 with friends. Diablo IV and Baldur's Gate currently run laggily (BG is almost unplayable). But I got a 4.0 this semester, and I kind of talked myself into, "I deserve a treat!"

There was a slight debate about this or a Switch 2. But I think I've aged out of consoles. Maybe as a graduation present or something when there's a new Zelda game. I just can't sit on the couch for hours like the old days. I get restless. Need a PC to multitask while playing. Reddit doesn't read itself!