6 ms·

I believe we'll see a return to more single use devices. They won't supplant smartphones. For one, I've thought a lot about having two separate computers: one

I believe we'll see a return to more single use devices. They won't supplant smartphones. For one, I've thought a lot about having two separate computers: one for writing code and a second for googling when I need help / slack / email / HN. And then keeping the two devices in physically separate places. I could accomplish this with software and accounts, but I know for myself it would be less effective.

macspoofing 6y ago
>I believe we'll see a return to more single use devices. I believe that too. I tried using my smart phone to take notes at trade-shows, and it just doesn't work well. I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster than unlocking your phone, loading OneNote and writing down some notes.
- Loughla 6y ago
  >I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster I actually took a cue from the disability world for this and use a neonotes notebook and smart pen. You get the little notebook for immediate writing, but you can digitize it later and transcribe it into text for editing. Immensely helpful tool. Just a god-send for those long technical conferences as well as day-to-day program meetings.
  - torstenvl 6y ago
    Based on this comment I checked out their website... and holy crap is it awful. The "Description" is just a video, there's no explanation of the difference between the different pens, all the different kits are confusing, it just seems like a mess. Please tell me the experience of using the pen(s?) is better than the site?
    - Loughla 6y ago
      Absolutely, their website is simply garbage. Their niche in my world is use with disability services and accommodations in colleges. Notetakers will use their pens to take notes for folks who need that service, and then send the transcription to the student in question. They're nice because you can record the lecture to accompany notes for classes where the context of the notes is important (higher level math and english especially). You can then play-back the notes as they're written down along with the audio. Super handy for that. I started using one just to test it for our students. They're not getting mine back. It's nice because you can change the weight and color of the ink electronically, highlight, and record audio to go along with it. It uses bluetooth to your phone, where you can transcribe, add tags to filter and search, and generally organize your notes in a very short amount of time. You can edit your writing on the computer or on your phone, so you can remove sensitive notes for individual people and share the page with very little work. It automatically recognizes separate notebooks and organizes them appropriately. It can integrate to my calendar; that way calendar events are added automatically if I write them on the notebook paper. The same for contacts via e-mail or phone - it can automatically add them to your contacts if you write them down. You can e-mail several file types straight from the pen using an e-mail link on the physical paper (small picture of an envelope). It can automatically backup to several cloud providers as well. There are picture editing and video illustration options as well, but I am not familiar with them. They're pretty intuitive. My handwriting is garbage and it does a good job of learning what I'm writing based on the first few pages of transcription changes that I've made. I use mine for all meetings and notes in my day-to-day. It is invaluable for those of us with garbage memories. I assign my team tasks in different colors and send the .pdf page out when necessary. 100% their website is crap.
gonzo41 6y ago
I have that, I have a work laptop, that i dock into a displaylink set of screens to run my work dev environment. And then sitting on the desk next to me is my personal laptop. Totally different uses and the seperation is really important because i never worry about typing the wrong thing into the wrong context because the full size keyboard is attached to the work computer. It's worked really well for me for about 3 years now. And i hardly look at my phone.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  I do pretty much the same, but I have my phone sitting next to me with an external bluetooth keyboard. I'd use an iPad, but there's no Whatsapp for those currently.
kinghtown 6y ago
I made another comment here about owning one of these. Yeah, there is a really compelling idea in single use tech/computers, especially for creative use. AlphaSmart really is distraction free to an extreme and instant on, writing where you left off in like three seconds is amazing. Problem though is that this is a cottage industry at best and any new devices will be priced in the same range as a POS laptop.. so why buy it? $600 for a new Justwrite? That’s a little dear.
- Markoff 6y ago
  agreed, unless you need long battery life any old Thinkpad for 100-150$ will do same job
tonyarkles 6y ago
> And then keeping the two devices in physically separate places. I've recently gotten to experience this somewhat, although on a single machine. With the whole "no in-person meetings" thing, I've been working out at my cabin with LTE tethering as my only Internet connection. Since I've got a limited amount of bandwidth, I spend most of the time off-line. It seems like the (admittedly miniscule) activation energy to set up the tether connection is just enough to make me be thoughtful about when I'm connected to the Internet, and it's really refreshing to not have all the notifications popping up all the time.
MH15 6y ago
If you use Windows, a similar experience can be attained by choosing the "taskbar where window is open" option in the "show taskbar buttons on:" setting of the Taskbar Settings window. this only shows the apps you have open on each monitor on that monitors taskbar. It provides me with a sense of using two separate computers, one for slack/email and one for code, while still having the convenience of copy and pasting between "computers".
jseliger 6y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. (Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.) He added a note to the top, however, saying that he gave up on his method.

macspoofing 6y ago

>I believe we'll see a return to more single use devices. I believe that too. I tried using my smart phone to take notes at trade-shows, and it just doesn't work well. I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster than unlocking your phone, loading OneNote and writing down some notes.

Loughla 6y ago
>I found having a little notebook + pen to be much faster I actually took a cue from the disability world for this and use a neonotes notebook and smart pen. You get the little notebook for immediate writing, but you can digitize it later and transcribe it into text for editing. Immensely helpful tool. Just a god-send for those long technical conferences as well as day-to-day program meetings.
- torstenvl 6y ago
  Based on this comment I checked out their website... and holy crap is it awful. The "Description" is just a video, there's no explanation of the difference between the different pens, all the different kits are confusing, it just seems like a mess. Please tell me the experience of using the pen(s?) is better than the site?
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Absolutely, their website is simply garbage. Their niche in my world is use with disability services and accommodations in colleges. Notetakers will use their pens to take notes for folks who need that service, and then send the transcription to the student in question. They're nice because you can record the lecture to accompany notes for classes where the context of the notes is important (higher level math and english especially). You can then play-back the notes as they're written down along with the audio. Super handy for that. I started using one just to test it for our students. They're not getting mine back. It's nice because you can change the weight and color of the ink electronically, highlight, and record audio to go along with it. It uses bluetooth to your phone, where you can transcribe, add tags to filter and search, and generally organize your notes in a very short amount of time. You can edit your writing on the computer or on your phone, so you can remove sensitive notes for individual people and share the page with very little work. It automatically recognizes separate notebooks and organizes them appropriately. It can integrate to my calendar; that way calendar events are added automatically if I write them on the notebook paper. The same for contacts via e-mail or phone - it can automatically add them to your contacts if you write them down. You can e-mail several file types straight from the pen using an e-mail link on the physical paper (small picture of an envelope). It can automatically backup to several cloud providers as well. There are picture editing and video illustration options as well, but I am not familiar with them. They're pretty intuitive. My handwriting is garbage and it does a good job of learning what I'm writing based on the first few pages of transcription changes that I've made. I use mine for all meetings and notes in my day-to-day. It is invaluable for those of us with garbage memories. I assign my team tasks in different colors and send the .pdf page out when necessary. 100% their website is crap.

gonzo41 6y ago

I have that, I have a work laptop, that i dock into a displaylink set of screens to run my work dev environment. And then sitting on the desk next to me is my personal laptop. Totally different uses and the seperation is really important because i never worry about typing the wrong thing into the wrong context because the full size keyboard is attached to the work computer. It's worked really well for me for about 3 years now. And i hardly look at my phone.

dividedbyzero 6y ago
I do pretty much the same, but I have my phone sitting next to me with an external bluetooth keyboard. I'd use an iPad, but there's no Whatsapp for those currently.

kinghtown 6y ago

I made another comment here about owning one of these. Yeah, there is a really compelling idea in single use tech/computers, especially for creative use. AlphaSmart really is distraction free to an extreme and instant on, writing where you left off in like three seconds is amazing. Problem though is that this is a cottage industry at best and any new devices will be priced in the same range as a POS laptop.. so why buy it? $600 for a new Justwrite? That’s a little dear.

Markoff 6y ago
agreed, unless you need long battery life any old Thinkpad for 100-150$ will do same job

tonyarkles 6y ago

> And then keeping the two devices in physically separate places. I've recently gotten to experience this somewhat, although on a single machine. With the whole "no in-person meetings" thing, I've been working out at my cabin with LTE tethering as my only Internet connection. Since I've got a limited amount of bandwidth, I spend most of the time off-line. It seems like the (admittedly miniscule) activation energy to set up the tether connection is just enough to make me be thoughtful about when I'm connected to the Internet, and it's really refreshing to not have all the notifications popping up all the time.

MH15 6y ago

If you use Windows, a similar experience can be attained by choosing the "taskbar where window is open" option in the "show taskbar buttons on:" setting of the Taskbar Settings window. this only shows the apps you have open on each monitor on that monitors taskbar. It provides me with a sense of using two separate computers, one for slack/email and one for code, while still having the convenience of copy and pasting between "computers".

jseliger 6y ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. (Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.) He added a note to the top, however, saying that he gave up on his method.