A separated device to write my blog or some short stories would be a godsend to me. With each year it passes, I feel my concentration vanish more and more. A distraction-free device could help me regain some concentration (I think).
Except, if it did not achieve your expectations. Note the article is short on facts, high on marketing verbiage. If I'm not mistaken this is the same blogger, Alex Soto who previously made a lot of claims and when I challenged him on it, rapidly backtracked. Same guy previously claimed that E-Ink was a patent abuser, and another similarly named guy who headed some kickstarter program claimed E-Ink was suppressing his business and that was why he wasn't able to deliver on previous products, but when I asked him to substantiate it, he changed his blog post.
Some guy in his basement that cobbled together a working e-Ink word processor would be much more interesting to me.
Also, you might like to check out the pomera https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/digital-memo-pomera-dm3...
That's exactly what this looks like. It looks like someone glued an e-Ink display into an old ThinkPad T41.
Zoom in on the bezels in the up-close view: https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/61a133075b8ce58a48f1bed1/61e...
The southeast corner looks like there's a battery indicator half-covered up.
It even has a IBM ThinkPad logo and a "T41" in the corner and machine screws holding the screen together.
This was already done successfully in another project; though on that one, it seemed like one would need to read Chinese to be successful with it.
I'm on my mobile so don't have a picture but will post one later.
One surprising thing to me?
I don't use it. At least, not much in comparison to my actual laptop.
It reminds me of folding keyboards for cell phones. I've bought a couple and thought, these are great, they'll make inputting text on a cell phone so much easier... except I don't end up carrying them around in my pocket, and so end up typing on my mobile phone using the touchscreen just like everyone else.
People think that a distraction free device will allow them to achieve their goals but it is actually the discipline to do the work which will allow them to achieve their goals; the device probably won't change that.
Requires a largish 3d printer (which I happen to have, one of the advantages of co-owning a makerspace:https://revolutionmakerspace.com/) or ordering a 3d print online.
I've talked with him about e-ink projects before (because I've got a similar project brewing). You previously caught him on the steep upward slope learning about e-ink where he had some incorrect information (e.g., your link), but he always took corrections and has kept at trying to make the e-ink laptop vision happen.
He is a true open-source advocate and while I don't know about Modos beyond the website, I trust he really is hoping to help such a project see the light of day and empower others to be able to make their own e-ink laptops.
Either someone's taking the piss, or terrible at naming things...
It won't free you from the distraction of your other devices though, as you've probably got a fully-online phone within reach.
It’s not very portable, though. I just picked up a Sears Citation for that, but the 1960s typewriter definition of portable is much closer to “you can take it on a trip and type in your hotel room” than it is to “you can take it on a hike and type under a tree.”
For actually portable typewriters I've really enjoyed my Royal Mercury and Smith-Corona Skyriter, both of which are usable on a lap on a bench (or under a tree).
I realise this is not an option for everyone of course. There's also apps that allow you to time lock your phone with exceptions for important things. Protip: set it up so you can get around it by rebooting the phone, in case you forgot to whitelist something, etc. Smartphones are painfully slow to boot anyway, so it still helps discourage the constant distraction if you can muster the will power to not do the reboot. More effort means you consider it rather than reflexively do it.
I've been using an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi as my daily driver for about a year. It's an e-ink Android tablet, principally intended as an e-book reader (which I use it for), though it also serves quite well for podcasts, web browsing, and general terminal work (Termux / SSH).
If I really want to minimise distractions, I'll disable networking. I can read local content (articles, or my Pocket stash), which is already ample distraction. Or play back downloaded podcasts.
It is far more usable outdoors or under bright lighting than any laptop or tablet, which is itself highly useful.
Battery life is quite good when reading ebooks. This involves disabling Bluetooth, WiFi, and if possible, the Backlight, and avoiding screen repaints. When used for podcasts or browsing, CPU drain is fairly substantial, though I can get well over a day's use per charge typically.
There's no social media or any other apps on the device. My one authenticating app is Pocket.
The UI is not entirely as distraction-free as I'd like, but it is far more so than any other device I've owned in decades.
Lacking colour and high-speed animations is of and by itself a major win on distraction-free status. So, interestingly enough, is the ability to take freehand notes on the device. I'd not anticipated doing that much, it's turned out to be a significant use.
Plug it into a computer via USB and it will declare itself a keyboard, and with one keystroke, "type" all your text into your computer.
Very clever.
The Dana touchscreen isn't as contrasty, the backlight eats battery, and if you use up all your batteries you will lose your data without backups. It's all quite manageable of course (since as you say it's just a Palm PDA with a keyboard) and has much more functionality, but not as bulletproof.
(I'm just happy to participate in a Alphasmart discussion LOL.)
https://getfreewrite.com/collections/writing-tools/products/...
Thank you for your words and for describing your use case. For writing, I tend to go analog. I use paper and pencil to write a rough draft and get my ideas on paper; the next stage is to type up the thoughts digitally and use a low-tech device like an AlphaSmart Neo, or Pomera DM30. I've found breaking up the writing process into steps and using a dedicated device works for me.
Realistically speaking it's your personal discipline and work ethic that's going to make it or break it, whether or not you have a hardware or software solution.
But I think the answer to this is "yes".
>I haven’t used emacs, would you say it is worthy?
Absolutely. Don't fall into the trap of having 4000-line configuration files. Emacs works well out of the box, and you can enable something called "CUA mode" to make the hotkeys for e.g. copy+paste work more like Windows, if that's what you want.