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delish·

Check out Alphasmarts. They're ~$40 on ebay. I have three models: Dana, Neo, and 3000. They have:

- sunlight readable display

- no internet temptation

- full keyboard designed by former Mac engineers, so it looks and feels good

- no moving parts (journalists take them into third-world countries)

- long battery life. (Dana: 24 hours, Neo and 3000: 700)

- They're recognized as USB keyboards, so you can output to computer easily.

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These are along the lines of what I've been dreaming, but I'm afraid the screen is far too small. I'm not plagued by LCDs either. My MacBook Pro screen is perfect. However, I want a digital experience completely without distractions, like the one I have with my Kindle (but for writing).

I have an idea that I call TypewriterOS. An USB bootable OS (probably based on Linux) that goes directly into a full screen text editor, which is in fact its only feature or software. No WiFi, no multitasking, no ability to save the plain text UTF-8 files to anywhere else but the USB that I booted from.

When I'm ready writing I reboot in to OS X and I can upload the result to wherever I need to.

Are you looking for this: http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux....? Not exactly what you are looking for, but a starting point, maybe.

The feature that's important for me is having immediate physical output. I don't like reading what I just wrote off a small LCD display. And I like having the paper result right away, but it would be nice to have a digital copy if I wanted to edit the document further. But thanks for the lead!

A mechanical typewriter and some white-out correction fluid?

You're missing the digital part. And I don't mean editing typos, I mean real editing. And things like being able to turn it into a blog post, for example.

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