One of the biggest problems that I have with new technology doodads is that I’m not very practical about acquiring them (see the small mountain of Wear OS watches I have in a box for a testimonial to that proclivity) and tend towards the stupid setting when it comes to acquisition lust. Strangely, despite this tendency, I avoid most Apple hardware entirely these days if only because I am freaked out by the walled garden approach so most of the super pricey and useless geegaws are off menu for me. The limited possibilities of the usefulness of any of their devices always leaves me cold.
I’m also no longer a tremendous fan of manually building too many components of functionally attractive gadgets. As I said yesterday, I’m just now purchasing my first Raspberry Pi ever. I also tend to avoid especially ambitious and gadgety Kickstarter campaigns because I know I’m going to be disappointed and/or frustrated by the results. This is largely due to being lazy.
That laziness, however, really, really makes me wish that things like the reMarkable 2 were a little
lot less expensive. I absolutely love the idea of having a large drawing surface with a paper analog feel. It sounds like the invention that I’ve been waiting for since my first computer (that was 1996, by the way, and I wasn’t already in the twenties) and having a glimpse of the possibilities that potentially lay ahead. The reviews from The Verge, Engadget, and a few others only increase my want for this incredibly limited but equally awesome device. There are a number of very appealing parts to this tablet: it’s running Linux, it has a textured screen to approximate the feeling of drawing on paper, and a few other factors but the price is what always empties my cart: $400 for E Ink is a tough sell for me. That said, I really enjoy all of the E Ink devices that I already have but I have a feeling that I’m going to wait for a (relatively) inexpensive, refurbished version of this or I’m eventually going to bite a bit harder on one of the Boox devices that I’ve been eying for a while. Some of those despite being Android devices have similar capabilities and, on the lower end of their product line, are sold at a price that doesn’t make me wince when I contemplate dropping that many dollars on what is really only going to be a drawing device for me. I do want but I know I can’t. That is not a pleasant place for me to linger.
