I own a neo2. They are nice for first drafts or noodling with words. There really is something in the idea of dumbing down tech to get things done. I have written quite a bit on it but three things have held me back from being a power user:

1. It uses a dated, proprietary cable to transfer your writing to a computer. Worst part of this is that the AlphaSmart re-types your writing so if you’ve written the 50000 word max then it will take some time to save it. The process is just annoying enough to trigger procrastination.

2. If the battery comes out then you’ve lost everything. This isn’t such a dealbreaker since I want a dumber word processor to get out of my way but I think it makes the keyboard a little too dumb.

3. Honestly, it’s not sexy. It’s huge, too. And people with no interest in writing just don’t get it at all. The looks people give me when I’ve used it in the public are like “what insane Jesus cult stuff is this guy writing on that??” Nothing crazy here, just hunting bugs on TempleOS.

I see a market for a machine like this but done better. The just write or whatever branding they are using checks a lot of boxes but the price is insane.

I think I’ll just rig up Atom to work a little bit more like Scrivener.