This is interesting and off-putting at the same time. I'm a writer who likes vintage tech as well as low-tech solutions. I write a lot by hand with pen-and-paper, so I appreciate techniques that force you to stop and think as you go along. But that said, did we really need to pay extra ($500 worth) for a gadget that takes away Twitter and email? And arrow keys? It seems like you can get all those features from a ball-point pen, although I suppose not everyone prefers the feel of a pen over the feel of a nice keyboard.
In the end, though, it is a pretty machine. I am shallow enough to appreciate it for its appearance at any rate.
Man, I really wanna love these things. No, I mean, I like typewriters so much I put them in public parks. (Here's a photo of Lauren and I from one of the earliest events we did setting up typewriters in a park. We called it The Carriage Return.) But... the Freewriter and other devices like it just come down to one thing: Discipline. I have iaWriter on my Mac. When I want to free write, or get an idea down without distractions, or just pound something out, I open it Full Screen, turn on Focus Mode, and I get... exactly the same functionality as the Freewriter ... for free. All it takes is discipline. Turn off wifi. Close your web browser. Be serious about what you are doing, and just do it. But man... the gadget-hound in me still really really really wants one of these things... even at $500.
I agree — I think a lot of money gets spent by people who want to pay to be writers, but who never actually write anything. You can get exactly the same effect with pen and paper, or a text editor, or a distraction-free mode like you described. Still, I can't help wanting to try the thing out. It is a pretty gadget.
A lot of people miss the writing part of writing, and being a writer. They think if they acquire the tools of a writer, they will magically be one. But writing is just stringing words together, one after another, until you have forgotten there are other people in the house. That's the long and short of it, really.
When I was in school, my district was forward thinking enough to get all the 5-7th graders to learn to type. We even had classes on typewriter repair. These were the models we used back when Sears was the WalMart of its day. To graduate 8th grade I had to demonstrate that I could fix a broken type writer. In 9th grade all reports, essays, and other homework that was not math had to be typed. I'm not going to be a elegant as kleinbl00 when I say this. If you feel nostalgic over mechanical keyboard, go fuck off you hipster asshole. Typewriters suck. Everything about then is awful. Typewriters exist because they were the best at the time given the limitations of the human technology advancement. The key layout is designed to slow you down YES REALLY STOP ARGUING THIS POINT QWERTY maximizes the separation between the common character pairs to minimize the frustration of the limits of the mechanical strike heads. Typewriter ribbons are evil, vile, foul monsters that hate humanity. Only someone who did not grow up with them will have a nostalgia about changing typewriter ribbons. The next thing you will demand is dot-matrix printers. NO. I use a Dvorak at home and work. My fingers fucking fly. When you see a post here on Hubski full of weird typos is it because I am on my laptop and I have not converted it to a DVORAK yet. For those of you with the desire to be different, but in a good way, get a DVORAK keyboard. Here is one used as an example. You can also get mechanical keyboards, which I recommend as well. Typing will suck for about a month, then you will never go back to QWERTY unless you absolutely have to. I type 100 WPM most days, but can never get over 50 on QWERTY. If this hipster trash fake nostalgia is allowed to keep getting more and more absurd, the next thing you know we will be using Cuneiform on baked clay tablets. I was going to end this post with a shitting on the desire for Papyrus, but it looks like there are multiple outlets selling A4 and US Letter Papyrus sheets. Get off my lawn.
Fucking love em. I like the Cherry Browns, myself but as they get more and more popular, as they should, they are getting more expensive to buy. Like typing on clouds and I get zero fatigue when typing on the home machine. They have ruined me for all other keyboards.
fistbump Although you ragging on papyrus, and me thinking you meant the font (I have a soft spot for papyrus even though I shouldn't, does raise another point: When you use "type-writery" things to communicate, you are abdicating layout, whitespace and everything else people who actually like to communicate with words hold dear. Hey, kids - know how we used to insert graphics back in the typewriter days? Well first you found a black'n'white newspaper picture. Then you traced it onto a piece of paper where you thought it should go. Then you typed your shit being careful not to type past the lines. Then you taped your newspaper picture down. Then you went to the library and ran off some fucking copies because it's the goddamn dark ages and all that left-center-right-justified crap you click through like it ain't no thing? Yeah, you get to be mindful of that shit every goddamn word. Oh, and fonts. You get one. It's the font. The fuck do you mean, what font? THE font. Unless you have a Selectric, but you don't, because you're a filthy hipster and while you adore the fuck out of this janky ass thing somehow this is beyond the pale corporate bullshit (notice how it's a "type style" not a "font" because what the fuck is a font) and that only makes me hate you more. Bitch, that's the tedious, pointless soundtrack of Mad Men and you know it. That circlejerk paean of an era you never really understood? "Office" is eight layers of Selectrics typing the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog as recorded in 1985. Got the samples. I ain't gonna say shit about Dvorak, I just know that I like being able to type on other people's computers. And I like being able to pick font, size, spacing, justification, word wrap, and all that other impossibly modern shit that used to be relegated to print shops. No, not the program, the actual thing, which for some reason you aren't hipstery about at all. If fucking hipsters had any appreciation of art at all they'd all be off restoring pen plotters.
This is THE major drawback. Personally, I think we should start teaching DVORAK in school and move away from QWERTY. Easier on the wrists, faster, less prone to errors. It takes about 2-3 weeks to un-train your fingers, then another two-three weeks to git gud and start typing faster than you did before. then you go to a QWERTY machine and fail all over yourself.I ain't gonna say shit about Dvorak, I just know that I like being able to type on other people's computers.
This might not be nearly as pretty, but if you're just looking for a low-tech keyboard that ultimately can link to the internet, you can get one of these (Amazon link) for $20 used. It's called an Alphasmart 3000. Like the picture, it's a low-tech keyboard that mainly does just word processing. It does allow copy and paste, but not a lot of it. From the Amazon reviews, it looks like people are still buying them. I don't know if they're still being manufactured.
I'm not sure what a null modem cable is, but the Alphasmart uses USB. It has to link to a computer. The Alphasmart is a straight keyboard. It doesn't have any computer capabilities except word processing. A pre-laptop portable computer has me curious. How long between the time that the Armstrad NC 100 came out and the laptop was available?
A null modem was a kind of serial cable you could use to transfer data between two computers -- waaaay before USB! The NC 100 came out in 1992, so although it is a full computer, it doesn't really do anything we'd expect in a computer today. I think 1992 puts it at about the same time as the modern laptop, but it would have been way lighter than any laptops available at the time. So yeah, if I ever want to get my writing off the bloody machine, the Alphasmart is probably a better bet these days.
Hi, I'm old. I learned to type on this: My first reports were typed on this: My first attempts at fiction were typed on this: Know what technology fuckin' deserved to die? I say this, knowing a guy who made a fuckn documentary on typewriters. Fuck typewriters. But especially FUCK typewriters that can't even put ink on paper. (full disclosure - I occasionally toy with buying a Groma Kolibri off eBay, but that's only because they're East German, ridiculously tiny, and part of a key plot point in The Lives of Others. I would never attempt to use it, nor pretend that it would be anything other than a twee object of fetishism)
I have a mid-80s electronic typewriter from Epson, it's surprisingly robust but trying to find ribbon cartridges for it is a nightmare. One cool thing it does, other than offer basic word processing, is it lets you hook it up to a modern and use it as a terminal. One got a Raspberry Pi, I've got a ribbon, I think it's time I hack this thing on to the modern internet!
RIGHT?!? I know! There were a couple of different attempts at typewriter design early on, trying to figure out the best way to arrange the mechanisms to make them work well. This one is a real "winner" because it actually obscures what you are writing, as you write it. Check it out: People complain about only being able to see two or three lines... well about about only being able to see 6 or 8 characters of the line you are typing?!? You will rarely see an Oliver No 9 working. Ours you could type a word or two on, and then do another 20 minutes of service to get it working again....