After the ‘excitement’ of the first Freewrite the new one has now arrived and I am typing this entry on it.
The first Freewrite was, of course, the second as the first was actually stolen and I never saw it. The difference between the one I had before and this one is night and day. The keys just work when I tap them – that might be the bare minimum one expects from a computer but that wasn’t even happening before so progress!
When I fist turned on the one I received I thought that it was just a weird machine and it would be a bit of a learning curve. I concluded that that was why letters seemed to be taking a while to appear. As it turned out it was the beginning of the problem that killed it.
This one, in the words of the ninth doctor, is fantastic. I saw a few reviews of it before I took the plunge that said that a Freewrite was slow and rather unresponsive – not in terms of a fault but because of the nature of e-ink. I am not finding that at all. I am typing at a normal speed and the letters are coming up like normal so I don’t see that.
The big question is will this device actually help me with writing? I think it probably will. When I am working on a blog post I often get bogged down in how it looks. By the time you read this there will be a picture and a nice layout. However trying to do two things at once, getting the words right and making in look good, means that I end up doing neither very well. Separating those two facets means both are done better.
That is not all. I am bad at spelling – a constant problem – and sometimes my spelling is so bad that even a spell checker doesn’t have a clue! And thus I am distracted with the wavy red lines under the words and stop writing to go and find the correct spelling. When my spelling is just that bad I go to plan B – which is rather ridicules.
Plan B is to find a TV, or movie, script that I know contains the word. So I look it up and copy and paste the word. I know it sounds crazy but it works. Minutiae is one such word I have trouble with. (Although this time my misspelling was close enough that I could get it without plan B.) Normal I have to seek out a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine script that contains the word. (And doing this can lead to the distraction of reading the script.)
The Freewrite doesn’t have a spellchecker so no distracting lines – it is just for writing. The Freewrite doesn’t even allow for editing. Technically you can use the back arrows but they require a keyboard shortcut, no dedicated keys, but this is a feature not a bug. The whole point of the device is that you just write and that is all and that is why I wanted it.
So far I am very happy with it and I think that it is going to help. Only time will tell if I am correct in that assertion.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
PS. I have jumped over the festive period. So happiness to you for the coming year. May your dreams come true this year.
Unstable Orbit 