Surprised my fellow typewriter folks haven't shown up yet! [paging @ebruchez]
If you want the writerdeck experience I'll echo the recommendations here for an Alphasmart. The brute-force autotyping file transfer it uses is quaint but always amusing. Gave one to a screenwriter friend and it's now gotten regular use for years. PDAs are a solid choice as well that may resonate with the HN crowd.
Don't sleep on owning an actual typewriter though. I have a small collection and use one daily. There's a rabbit hole of ~150 years of makes & models (most of which continue to function fine today) that will give any mechanical keyboard enthusiast much to chew on. :)
I was born in 1990 with two geeky parents who always had a printer and at least one computer available, so I didn’t get to grow up using one, but my brain always sort of romanticized typewriters. I eventually bought a used Brother typewriter, and also one of those “word processors” that was basically a crappy computer that uses a typewriter as a printer.
They were fun to play with, but ultimately I don’t really write fiction, and pretty much anything I do write about would necessitate internet access to research weird math or tech stuff. I could of course use my phone for that, and I tried that for a bit, but I found that even more distracting than a regular laptop would be. This, in combination of the lack of spelling and grammar checks made made made it so that it was never more than a toy for me, and I eventually gave it away.
It made an extremely loud and satisfying “thunk” noise whenever it typed or printed and I admittedly do miss that sometimes. Maybe I should buy one of those color dotmatrix printers.
If you want the writerdeck experience I'll echo the recommendations here for an Alphasmart. The brute-force autotyping file transfer it uses is quaint but always amusing. Gave one to a screenwriter friend and it's now gotten regular use for years. PDAs are a solid choice as well that may resonate with the HN crowd.
Don't sleep on owning an actual typewriter though. I have a small collection and use one daily. There's a rabbit hole of ~150 years of makes & models (most of which continue to function fine today) that will give any mechanical keyboard enthusiast much to chew on. :)