Retro writing 11 – Casio HW-300JS

The device I'm trying to use in this part of this retro writing series of articles is genuinely unique. I knew I had to try it out as soon as I saw it on the Japanese second-hand goods website I usually frequent. A small format, portable, personal word processor with a built-in printer! This should…

Retro Writing 10 – AlphaSmart DANA

First, let me explain really quick what an AlphaSmart is. If you, like me, search around the internet for distraction-free writing devices, you will surely find the long line of AlphaSmart word-processing keyboards made by a USA-based company between 1993 and 2007. These were conceptually very simple – a keyboard with a small LCD that…

Retro writing 06 – HP palmtops

One of the things that inspired me to look at old computers as cool and exciting tools for writing texts was Neil Gaiman typing one of his novels on an old Atari Portfolio Palmtop. However, the second one was Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin admitting to still using a DOS program Word Star 4.0 to write his…

Retro writing 02 – ARDATA

In my search for an interesting, distraction-free writing device, I went first for the most capable options – my laptop and the iPad Pro. With a good application, such as Scrivener, writing and editing on my iPad is just a pleasure (especially lately with the wireless keyboard and trackpad support enabled). I could just end…