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The Freewrite Traveler: Halfway Between a Typewriter and a Laptop

It's a "dedicated drafting device"

By Rain Noe - August 22, 2023

in Object Culture

There's a market for iPads, and there's a market for Kindles—the latter being dedicated devices for people who only want to read.

What Kindles are to iPads, the Freewrite Traveler is to laptops. The Freewrite Traveler is a "dedicated drafting device" that allows writers to do just one thing, write. No notifications, no e-mail, no spur-of-the-moment web browsing.

Users are meant to compose drafts on the device, start to finish, then handle the messy business of editing on a proper computer. And because the screen is an e-ink display, the device's battery life is freaking four weeks.

Lastly, the device is literally half the size of a laptop, and weighs just 1.6 lbs.

The Freewrite Traveler runs $500.

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Ryan Cee

a year ago

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A keyboard with a black and white screen and probably some homebrew Linux running a Notepad clone is not worth $50, let alone $500. Yeesh.

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Stephen Knifton

a year ago

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uhmmmmm ..... okay. or you could just put your laptop on airplane mode.

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- dtech system
  
  Stephen Knifton
  
  a year ago
  
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  yeh its very good
  
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Scott Urban

a year ago

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The price may be a bit steep for what it is, but I think the product has its place. I think there is psychologically a difference between choosing to close other apps, go into airplane mode, etc. (and constantly resisting turning them back on) and making it so you just don't have those other options at all.

It also seems pretty useful for someone who might be trying to travel light or who will be without access to electricity but still wants to do some writing.

I have a Remarkable tablet, which has some similarities to this, and really like it. I guess the difference, though, is that besides being limited for focus reasons it is actually superior to other options (lighter and better feel than a touchscreen tablet, more storage and organization than paper).

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Stuart Constantine

a year ago

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Similar (in terms of functionality) to the IBM PC I used to write papers when I was in college back in the stone age. Except in my case I had to load the OS on a floppy disk to start the computer, and then save my drafts on the same floppy disk. That PC was the size of a suitcase, with a green/white CRT monitor on top too!

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Dan Lewis

a year ago

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Yikes, that's a stupid product !!!!!

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