A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2.
* It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.
It's fairly easy (not always cheap) to get almost any old computer you could think of in very good condition to run the programs you like without further hassles. This can make a lot of sense because sometimes there are hassles associated to virtualisation/emulation/modern hardware.
Maybe you feel at home using WordStar 4.0 + VGA text mode in a CRT monitor. If that's the case, you can't beat the ease and responsiveness of a DOS computer. I have this conviction that there's nothing wrong with that.
I also toyed with releasing the setup as a USB boot image, but the copyright on WordStar is still very much active :(
But a predilection towards WordStar isn't just about not having fancy icons and weird ribbons, as author Robert Sawyer[1] pointed out. The "long page" metaphor and a short-cut friendly environment should be somewhat understandable for us programmer people.
Yeah, that's what the hipsters say. With a maximum of 5 rows of visible text I don't think it would be a very good option for novels.
[1] - https://onezero.medium.com/this-35-keyboard-for-children-tra...
- quote - @nordsieck
>> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels
> A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2.
* It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer. - unquote -