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Exit Strategy
Dec 10, 2010

by sebmojo

blugu64 posted:



I think it was 2001/2002 when I had this setup. It was my big worked all summer, buy a cool phone before going to college thing. Also had Wifi, but you had to remove the phone cartridge.

In 2001, I had a Visor Prism with a VisorPhone module. I used it mostly for reading books, taking short notes, and as a phone. It was pretty bitchin'.

I also had an 8MB memory module, and my only real regret about using that (it's where my books were) was that I had to swap modules to use the phone.

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Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON

Ultimate Mango posted:

As for obsolete car tech:

Sync needs to die, but those capacitive buttons below the screen. Pretty sure those cause accidents because they are hard to use just by feel, you usually need to look down to hit the right button.

Honestly the non-navigation side of Sync is probably the best implementation of a "smart" car stereo I've interacted with. I had two company cars (a 2010 and then 2012 Fusion) that had Sync w/o the in-dash navigation and its execution was nearly flawless for playing back digital media and interfacing with a mobile phone via bluetooth.

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli

Ultimate Mango posted:

As for obsolete car tech...
Well this is roughly what BMW started with.


Even today it holds up fairly well it gives you consumption, temp and spotty average speed readouts.

The downside is that the thing sort of relied on you having to constantly give it numbers to crunch. Stuff like distance and arrival timers relied on you already knowing how far you are going to travel; you couldn't store places in there.

Simpler models just provided the date/time and temp along with the ability to set off an alarm clock.

Keep in mind this is just the faceplate. The whole computer rested behind the steering wheel.

The system slowly expanded in complexity leading up to dashboard display readouts before being replaced by the infamous iDrive setup in 2001.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM
I have a real irrational affinity for the old BMW onboard computers like that :\

I need to tear my display out and replace a backlight bulb, I miss it.

NihilismNow
Aug 31, 2003
The past few pages of this thread are great for making you feel old. Most of the phones and MP3 players posted i mentally go "that thing isn't that obsolete/old" and then you realise it came out over 12 years ago and for people in their teens now it might as well be a 8 track player.

robodex
Jun 6, 2007

They're what's for dinner

Krispy Kareem posted:

What really catapulted the iPod was iTunes, which was the most unrestrictive digital music store. Music stores before iTunes had all kinds of weird rules like you could burn this track, but not this track, and only X number of times. Apple managed to cut through all that and put together an usable storefront. Sure there was still DRM, but you could burn an iTunes playlist 10 times and individual tracks until the laser on your Superdrive fell off.

I know this is from a few pages ago, but this bears repeating as early digital music stores could definitely be considered a failed technology. At the time, labels and stores didn't know how to hell to combat MP3 proliferation so they tried to sell digital music in their own way. The only thing is they failed to grasp that the reason MP3s were so popular was because they were so easy to use. Everything played them, they were small, and you could download one in a few minutes even on a dial up connection. Instead of taking that idea and making formats easy to use and widely compatible, they instead made their own file formats that were full of restrictions like only being able to play a song X times, needing use proprietary software/hardware, always needing to be online, etc. Hell, in some cases it was actually more expensive to buy digitally. It failed horribly because there was no advantage to buying music digitally--why bother when you could just download the album for free and not have to worry?

I remember reading at one point during the development of iTunes, Steve Jobs basically looked at what had been done and realized in order to create a successful digital music store they needed to basically make it as easy or easier than downloading MP3s. Cue iTunes being released along the iPod and for the first time people could buy music easily and cheaply. Yes, there was DRM but it was only restrictive in the sense that it was tied to your computer/device/Apple account.

RedTeam
Feb 5, 2011

SHAZAM!

robodex posted:

Hell, in some cases it was actually more expensive to buy digitally.

Not so true for music nowadays (if anybody still actually buys music in 2014), but I can't wait for digital distribution of games to catch up. Particularly console games such as on the Xbox Live Marketplace, where a game will stay selling for RRP for years and years after it comes out. Maybe it drops to £20 if the game goes triple-platinum for some poo poo. Meanwhile you can buy a used copy for a fraction of the price. Still somewhat true for films too. Buy a digital copy of a decades-old film for ~£8, that you can buy second hand for 50p.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

robodex posted:

Hell, in some cases it was actually more expensive to buy digitally. It failed horribly because there was no advantage to buying music digitally--why bother when you could just download the album for free and not have to worry?


It's because the labels were wedded to their own obsolete technology: the album. A friend of mine who's a real music writer had a blog entry on this several years ago on Livejournal (another obsolete technology!):

quote:

This is the root of the singles-versus-albums debate, and it's a half-century old. Classical, with its long pieces punctuated by movements, never really had this problem. Neither did jazz, with its emphasis on performance and improvisation. But ever since gramophone records became a mass medium in the early 20th century, the industry has been trying to get the content – songs that could fit on one side of a 78-RPM platter, for instance – to follow the format they found most profitable.

For a while, that demand for profitability actually meant singles. As late as the mid-’60s, labels actually encouraged artists to keep churning out songs they could sell individually. Even as rock acts started to think of their artistic statements in terms of albums, labels would demand hit-bound songs in-between album releases that could be sold as a 45 and tide fans over until the next LP.

It's laughable to even consider this now, but in 1966, while the Beatles were working on what became Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, EMI stole two of the catchiest songs from the sessions ("Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever") and issued them as a chart-topping "double-A-side" single; the Beatles left the songs off the album, released months later. Nowadays, that would be unthinkable. The label would release "Penny Lane" to deejays, "work it" to radio for six months or so and then, with carefully planned synergy, release an album with the built-in hit while working a second single. Rather than being the singles-free "concept" album we know, Sgt. Pepper would have been strip-mined for hit after hit.

And would that have been so bad? For one thing, the idea of the single-free, artistically "pure" album has proved to be (mostly) a crock, the occasional Led Zeppelin or Radiohead album notwithstanding. But there was a bigger problem with Sgt. Pepper, which officially kicked off the "album era" (even thought it followed Pet Sounds by months and several Frank Sinatra concept albums by a decade, but never mind): it gave the music industry a new business model – one to which it still mindlessly clings, 40 years later.

Once labels saw that long-playing albums could sell as well as or better than 45-RPM singles, the whole emphasis changed. Music was meant to be heard, enjoyed, judged and, most important, purchased at length. The standard unit of measure for music became not the song, but the bundle of songs. Labels built their economic foundation around people's willingness to buy more than one song by an artist at a time.

So began three decades of artistic evolution – the best artists created brilliant, ageless album-length statements – and commercial devolution. In the '70s, labels treated rock acts as "album acts" and pop and R&B acts as "singles acts," prioritizing the former and ghettoizing the latter. In the ’80s, labels emphasized albums that could be milked dry for hits: Thriller, Purple Rain, Born in the U.S.A., True Blue, Control, Hysteria, Faith – each spinning off five, six, even seven hits until radio listeners succumbed and bought the damned thing already. At least then, they let you buy the singles, too. By the ’90s, overcome by greed, the labels decided to eliminate singles altogether, withholding radio smashes from the under-$5 market. You like that Fugees song we've spread across R&B, rock, top 40 and adult-contemporary radio over the past year? Come and get the full CD, it's on sale for 16 bucks. Pop lovers got whiplash, as they went from the '80s mode of hearing hit acts saturate radio with a string of singles to the '90s model – hearing one hit burned out for the better part of a year. One admiring Billboard article I read in the mid-’90s actually marveled at A&M Records' ability to promote the Gin Blossoms song "Hey Jealousy" for about 15 months.

When you look at pop-music history this way, the Napster movement at the end of the century can be read as a true, epoch-ending rebellion – not just to the mediocre quality and high prices of CDs in the ’90s, but to an industry that misread human nature back in the ’60s and can't admit it made a mistake. It's the songs, stupid! The public has tried to deliver this message to musicians and the industry over and over: let us buy the songs, and we might buy the album too; we learn to love an act one song at a time, not one album at a time. But now that the industry's economic model – indeed, its entire infrastructure – demands that we buy music in bundles, they can't bear to dial it back. Not even when iTunes has given them a popular, relatively economical way to do it.

atomicthumbs
Dec 26, 2010


We're in the business of extending man's senses.
y'all with your Palms and Handsprings. I had a Handera TRGPro; bought it at a garage sale for $5, and it served middle school me perfectly for years.



It was based, hardware-wise, on a Palm IIIX. Behind that cover are a Compactflash card slot and an IRDA port. That's right, I filled this baby up with 128 megabytes of ebooks and programs. I even ended up getting a modem that clipped to the bottom so I could browse the internet!

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Phanatic posted:

It's because the labels were wedded to their own obsolete technology: the album. A friend of mine who's a real music writer had a blog entry on this several years ago on Livejournal (another obsolete technology!):

I have never dirtier than selling Lou Bega's A Little Bit of Mambo for $19 to a teenage girl at Wherehouse Music. $20 for one song. And not even a good song.

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


Mr. Beefhead posted:

Well that just makes no goddamn sense at all. There is no way that a run of cassette tapes is in any way easier or cheaper than a run of cds, and then you've also got to deal with the fact that you're offering a thing in a format that you'd be lucky if even a fifth of your potential customers have the means to play. I mean, I can see the kitsch factor, but it's a hell of a sacrifice to make for the sake of kitsch.
For short runs of <500 copies, it comes out a lot cheaper. High quality blank cassette tapes are a dime a piece if you buy them in packs of 1000 and with a few dubbing decks it only takes a few hours to make a run of 50-100.

DrBouvenstein posted:

Man, did everyone have a Palm at some point?
Yes.

sudont
May 10, 2011
this program is useful for when you don't want to do something.

Fun Shoe
For years, I had an Optigan in my kitchen--when my ex moved out he couldn't store it, so it stayed with me. In my kitchen. Where people would ask, "Why is there a weird piano in your kitchen?" I'd fire it up and it'd usually work, though they were basically made to be toys, not musical instruments, and the turntable made so much noise it was hard to hear the optical disk. There was also a lot of "bleeding" when you used the chord buttons, they all sort of sounded the same. Disks were really pretty though, and it had a real kitschy sound, like a porno was about to break out. In the kitchen.

robodex
Jun 6, 2007

They're what's for dinner

Krispy Kareem posted:

I have never dirtier than selling Lou Bega's A Little Bit of Mambo for $19 to a teenage girl at Wherehouse Music. $20 for one song. And not even a good song.

Did you ever listen to that album? My teacher in grade 8 subjected it to us. Spoiler: it's literally "Mambo No 5" over and over again with slightly different lyrics. I think there's maybe 1 or 2 songs on the album that sound different but otherwise it's the same backing track with different lyrics.

Tiny Brontosaurus
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax
Does anyone know if there's a typewriter thread in A/T or somewhere? Conversely, is there a typewriter nerd in the house?

Captain Trips
May 23, 2013
The sudden reminder that I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about
I know I shouldn't be feeling this way, but I am anyway.

I recently broke my Galaxy Nexus, which was running a custom rom based on Android 4.4 (KitKat). I borrowed an old phone from a friend, and it's an HTC Incredible 2, running Verizon's bloatware-infested version of Android 2.2 (Froyo)

I feel like I've been sent ten years into the tech past, even though I know this phone is barely a few years old.

carry on then
Jul 10, 2010

by VideoGames

(and can't post for 10 years!)

Try using a flip phone for a few days/weeks. That'll feel like the Stone Age.

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair

Captain Trips posted:

I know I shouldn't be feeling this way, but I am anyway.

I recently broke my Galaxy Nexus, which was running a custom rom based on Android 4.4 (KitKat). I borrowed an old phone from a friend, and it's an HTC Incredible 2, running Verizon's bloatware-infested version of Android 2.2 (Froyo)

I feel like I've been sent ten years into the tech past, even though I know this phone is barely a few years old.

The usability stuff they've done with Android since v2 and v3 is really insane. My Skyrocket came with Gingerbread, and upgrading to ICS was like a new world.

Of course a lot of that is also the rom you use. I currently have an S4 running Verizon's stock JB image and it's terrible in a lot of ways even CyanogenMod ICS wasn't.

Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer

carry on then posted:

Try using a flip phone for a few days/weeks. That'll feel like the Stone Age.

This is exactly what happened to me like 2 weeks ago- I had to use a flip phone for three days- the humanity!

Although I sorta like the fact that the battery seemingly did not go down at all for the three days I was using the thing. Also I just... like the flipping-the-phone-open thing. Or any kind of motion like sliding the phone apart or something. Also physical keys!

If there was an Android device with the battery life of the RAZR Maxx HD and a slide-out keyboard (that was worth a drat and didn't feel like mushy bullshit) under a full screen I would probably buy it, bulkiness be damned.

Magnus Praeda
Jul 18, 2003
The largess in the land.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Does anyone know if there's a typewriter thread in A/T or somewhere? Conversely, is there a typewriter nerd in the house?

1) Not that I've seen
2) Yes

Tiny Brontosaurus
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

Magnus Praeda posted:

1) Not that I've seen
2) Yes

Hi :)

Thinking of getting a small non-electric typewriter for making index cards (part of my outlining process).

1) Is that a thing you can even reasonably do with a typewriter
2) If so what would you suggest?

Price is no particular object but learning curve/technical finickyness is.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

sudont posted:

For years, I had an Optigan in my kitchen--when my ex moved out he couldn't store it, so it stayed with me. In my kitchen. Where people would ask, "Why is there a weird piano in your kitchen?" I'd fire it up and it'd usually work, though they were basically made to be toys, not musical instruments, and the turntable made so much noise it was hard to hear the optical disk. There was also a lot of "bleeding" when you used the chord buttons, they all sort of sounded the same. Disks were really pretty though, and it had a real kitschy sound, like a porno was about to break out. In the kitchen.
If anyone's curious, this is what it sounds like (the compression makes it sound fuzzier than it actually is, but not by much):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZDulUk-I8

Lovely little album as a whole, by the way.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

carry on then posted:

Try using a flip phone for a few days/weeks. That'll feel like the Stone Age.
We have a couple of Nokia 100 phones at work that we threaten users with, as in "If you break your phone you get to use this for a week while we order you a replacement."

Phy
Jun 27, 2008



Fun Shoe

Collateral Damage posted:

We have a couple of Nokia 100 phones at work that we threaten users with, as in "If you break your phone you get to use this for a week while we order you a replacement."

"We'd like to offer you the use of this indestructible battle-club."

30 SECONDS LATER

"Ow ow ow I'll give you my own phone if you stop beating me with the indestructible battle-club!"

Ensign Expendable
Nov 11, 2008

Lager beer is proof that god loves us
Pillbug

DrBouvenstein posted:

Man, did everyone have a Palm at some point?

Before my first "smartphones", in college, 2002/2003, I had a Palm IIIc.

That 'c' stood for color.



:getin:

After I no longer needed it, I actually found a program that used the Palm IIIc as an RSS reader.

The downside was it wasn't wireless (since that Palm didn't have wifi,) so it had to be in its dock the whole time, and the dock connected to the PC (with a serial cable, natch.)

Edit: Ha, according to Wikipedia:

(bolding mine.)

DragonBall CPU?!? Did they ever go Super Saiyan?

I had one of those! I never mastered Graffiti and preferred the on screen keyboard. Eventually I got a sweet folding one that, sadly, only worked with that model of Palm and not with any of the ones I bought later.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Phy posted:

"We'd like to offer you the use of this indestructible battle-club."

30 SECONDS LATER

"Ow ow ow I'll give you my own phone if you stop beating me with the indestructible battle-club!"
Ha, you think that because it says Nokia, but the 100 is just a really basic feature phone made from cheap plastic. To its credit it's small and lightweight, which does prevent phone-bludgeoning.

Magnus Praeda
Jul 18, 2003
The largess in the land.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Hi :)

Thinking of getting a small non-electric typewriter for making index cards (part of my outlining process).

1) Is that a thing you can even reasonably do with a typewriter
2) If so what would you suggest?

Price is no particular object but learning curve/technical finickyness is.

It's not terribly difficult to type on a standard 3x5 index card though it will curl them slightly due to the rollers. It may also not hold the card perfectly (depends on the design of your typewriter) but if you're okay with manually tweaking each card as you put it in, yeah, it's possible.

Have you ever used a manual typewriter before? Or really any typewriter? I'm guessing not, so my suggestion is this:

You probably don't want to use a manual typewriter for this unless you are lugging it to your local indie coffee shop for some "serious writer" cred or something. Electric typewriters are much, much easier to use. A manual typewriter will slow your typing to a crawl since imprinting each letter requires you to apply a somewhat ridiculous (for people spoiled by touch-typing on computer keyboards) amount of pressure rapidly. You're almost certainly going to be a hell of a lot slower than you would be hand writing each card.

Go to your local Goodwill (or whatever thrift shop you like) and troll for an IBM Wheelwriter or Selectric. Brother makes (made?) some really fantastic typewriters, but if you don't know what you're getting, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to find a ribbon for it. Selectrics and Wheelwriters were and are the gold standard and their ribbons are easy to get (I think Staples carries them, for example). If you're just using it for index cards, you aren't likely to use any of the advanced typesetting stuff, so which version you get is pretty irrelevant. I'd recommend bringing a blank sheet of 8.5x11 paper so you can test to see if the ribbon that's in them has any life left and also to see that each key is still striking.

The other nice thing about electrics is that they (almost) all have correction ribbons, making it easy to delete mistakes which it does by overtyping each letter with a lift-off film that just pulls the ink off the page.

If you're dead set on getting a manual typewriter, know that although there are a couple manufacturers still making ribbon, there are so many various manufacturers and models of manual typewriters that you may be buying a really awesome paperweight. Also, almost none of the manual typewriters you find in secondhand shops will have been maintained, they may have bent hammers, they will almost certainly need cleaning, etc. all of which may conspire to make them useless or, at least, harder to use than they should be.

Notably, there are still manufacturers making new typewriters to this day. You can get a Royal Epoch on Amazon for around $130, for example.

Holy crap that's a lot of :words: about typewriters.

empty baggie
Oct 22, 2003

I was in the last "typing" class my high school offered back in 95 or 96. Halfway through the semester the new "keyboarding" classroom/computer lab was finished and we moved from typewriters to computers.

WickedHate
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

empty baggie posted:

I was in the last "typing" class my high school offered back in 95 or 96. Halfway through the semester the new "keyboarding" classroom/computer lab was finished and we moved from typewriters to computers.

What was it like, transitioning from one to the other? Personally, I found the keyboarding(which was just called typing for obvious reasons) class I took a years ago to be a waste either way.

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.

Magnus Praeda posted:

If you're dead set on getting a manual typewriter, know that although there are a couple manufacturers still making ribbon, there are so many various manufacturers and models of manual typewriters that you may be buying a really awesome paperweight.
This is really not that big of a deal. If it's the kind from the '80s that take lovely cartridges which are no longer manufactured then don't buy it, manual typewriters from that era aren't worth it anyway. The old ones that take reels, you won't be able to get the exact manufacturer's reel, but I use spools of ink ribbon designed for adding machines or printing calculators or whatever the gently caress those things are, and the worst case is on one or two machines I have to keep vintage spools handy and re-roll the new ribbon onto them which takes about 30 seconds by using a little electric drill to spin the spools for me.

Still probably not worth it for the other reasons listed, but ink's not that big a deal, tiny amount of effort to keep it from being a paperweight.

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

SLOSifl posted:

I had an Alpine head unit that did this for both tape and CD access. It got stolen from my 1981 Honda Civic along with Disc 2 of a 4-disc Led Zeppelin box set. I saved up all summer for both of those. :(

When my car was broken into all they took was my Mike Oldfield double album of Tubular Bells on tape. At least they had taste I guess?

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Magnus Praeda posted:

It's not terribly difficult to type on a standard 3x5 index card though it will curl them slightly due to the rollers. It may also not hold the card perfectly (depends on the design of your typewriter) but if you're okay with manually tweaking each card as you put it in, yeah, it's possible.

Have you ever used a manual typewriter before? Or really any typewriter? I'm guessing not, so my suggestion is this:

You probably don't want to use a manual typewriter for this unless you are lugging it to your local indie coffee shop for some "serious writer" cred or something. Electric typewriters are much, much easier to use. A manual typewriter will slow your typing to a crawl since imprinting each letter requires you to apply a somewhat ridiculous (for people spoiled by touch-typing on computer keyboards) amount of pressure rapidly. You're almost certainly going to be a hell of a lot slower than you would be hand writing each card.

Go to your local Goodwill (or whatever thrift shop you like) and troll for an IBM Wheelwriter or Selectric. Brother makes (made?) some really fantastic typewriters, but if you don't know what you're getting, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to find a ribbon for it. Selectrics and Wheelwriters were and are the gold standard and their ribbons are easy to get (I think Staples carries them, for example). If you're just using it for index cards, you aren't likely to use any of the advanced typesetting stuff, so which version you get is pretty irrelevant. I'd recommend bringing a blank sheet of 8.5x11 paper so you can test to see if the ribbon that's in them has any life left and also to see that each key is still striking.

The other nice thing about electrics is that they (almost) all have correction ribbons, making it easy to delete mistakes which it does by overtyping each letter with a lift-off film that just pulls the ink off the page.

If you're dead set on getting a manual typewriter, know that although there are a couple manufacturers still making ribbon, there are so many various manufacturers and models of manual typewriters that you may be buying a really awesome paperweight. Also, almost none of the manual typewriters you find in secondhand shops will have been maintained, they may have bent hammers, they will almost certainly need cleaning, etc. all of which may conspire to make them useless or, at least, harder to use than they should be.

Notably, there are still manufacturers making new typewriters to this day. You can get a Royal Epoch on Amazon for around $130, for example.

Holy crap that's a lot of :words: about typewriters.

I've been beaten thoroughly by this excellent post, but yeah, when I saw the mention of a manual typewriter my thought was "brother needs a Selectric".

I have two manuals. They make lovely decorations and are occasionally useful... I've filled out a few forms with them. You have to be very careful with them, because you have to press the keys so far down that there's a very good chance you'll also end up pressing another key next to it with the edge of your finger, which will either jam the hammers or cause a second, faint letter to be typed as well.

If you can find a first-gen Selectric that actually works, buy it. Those things are very tough, as Magnus mentions you can still buy ribbons everywhere, and they even have interchangeable type-balls so you can change fonts and such easily. Oh, and since the type-ball moves rather than the platen, it takes up less space on your desk and isn't constantly knocking over glasses / shifting around when it slams back to the start of a line.

Seriously, look at this thing, how can you not want it? And yes, it appears the owner has put some sort of script type-ball on it which is pretty cool.

Horace
Apr 17, 2007

Gone Skiin'

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Hi :)

Thinking of getting a small non-electric typewriter for making index cards (part of my outlining process).

1) Is that a thing you can even reasonably do with a typewriter
2) If so what would you suggest?

Price is no particular object but learning curve/technical finickyness is.

I thoroughly recommend buying a manual typewriter, they're fun and cheap. Check eBay for ribbon, they're still available for most of the mainstream typewriters. Index cards will be fiddly in a typewriter - as Magnus Praeda said it'll curl them a bit. If the platen rubber has gone hard with age the card will slip in the roller which will be irritating.

If you can try one before buying it just check that all the letters print well, and that all the letters are in a straight line. Alignment can be tricky to adjust properly. Typewriters should be oiled with a small amount of light oil on a brush. Don't blast them with WD-40.

I'm a fan of Olympia's portables, they're well made and enjoyable to use. Whatever you get, don't spend a fortune because you really don't have to.

edit: fast thread

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Horace posted:

Typewriters should be oiled with a small amount of light oil on a brush. Don't blast them with WD-40.

This is a public service announcement: WD-40 is not a lubricant! Horace knows that, but do you?

This announcement brought to you by 3-in-1 oil, an actual lubricant that is cheap and versatile.

Tiny Brontosaurus
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

Magnus Praeda posted:

It's not terribly difficult to type on a standard 3x5 index card though it will curl them slightly due to the rollers. It may also not hold the card perfectly (depends on the design of your typewriter) but if you're okay with manually tweaking each card as you put it in, yeah, it's possible.

Have you ever used a manual typewriter before? Or really any typewriter? I'm guessing not, so my suggestion is this:

You probably don't want to use a manual typewriter for this unless you are lugging it to your local indie coffee shop for some "serious writer" cred or something. Electric typewriters are much, much easier to use. A manual typewriter will slow your typing to a crawl since imprinting each letter requires you to apply a somewhat ridiculous (for people spoiled by touch-typing on computer keyboards) amount of pressure rapidly. You're almost certainly going to be a hell of a lot slower than you would be hand writing each card.

Go to your local Goodwill (or whatever thrift shop you like) and troll for an IBM Wheelwriter or Selectric. Brother makes (made?) some really fantastic typewriters, but if you don't know what you're getting, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to find a ribbon for it. Selectrics and Wheelwriters were and are the gold standard and their ribbons are easy to get (I think Staples carries them, for example). If you're just using it for index cards, you aren't likely to use any of the advanced typesetting stuff, so which version you get is pretty irrelevant. I'd recommend bringing a blank sheet of 8.5x11 paper so you can test to see if the ribbon that's in them has any life left and also to see that each key is still striking.

The other nice thing about electrics is that they (almost) all have correction ribbons, making it easy to delete mistakes which it does by overtyping each letter with a lift-off film that just pulls the ink off the page.

If you're dead set on getting a manual typewriter, know that although there are a couple manufacturers still making ribbon, there are so many various manufacturers and models of manual typewriters that you may be buying a really awesome paperweight. Also, almost none of the manual typewriters you find in secondhand shops will have been maintained, they may have bent hammers, they will almost certainly need cleaning, etc. all of which may conspire to make them useless or, at least, harder to use than they should be.

Notably, there are still manufacturers making new typewriters to this day. You can get a Royal Epoch on Amazon for around $130, for example.

Holy crap that's a lot of :words: about typewriters.

I actually have used a manual typewriter many times before, and I've been a full-time professional writer for over ten years now so my "serious writer cred" is more than sufficient, thanks. I just wanted model recommendations. I was looking for non-electric because I like to do this phase of work outside, and a typewriter over handwriting because I have an injured tendon that makes handwriting very painful. Thanks for the advice mixed in with the sneering though, that part was genuinely useful. Maybe don't assume anyone asking you about your hobby is a dilettante next time though?

Nuclear Pogostick
Apr 9, 2007

Bouncing towards victory
Yep, the WD stands for water displacer. Personally I'm a fan of white lithium grease for things that slide, and just regular old Hoppes' gun oil for things that rotate.

Sir_Substance
Dec 13, 2013

Collateral Damage posted:

Ha, you think that because it says Nokia, but the 100 is just a really basic feature phone made from cheap plastic. To its credit it's small and lightweight, which does prevent phone-bludgeoning.

The Nokia 100 is a good phone :colbert: it's twin, the 101, is dual sim quadband. No more cost effective phone for going overseas.

I like featurephones, I get very little mileage out of smartphones. The only thing I do with smartphones that I can't do on a feature phone is google maps for the bus timetables and internet banking.

Mocking Bird
Aug 17, 2011

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

I actually have used a manual typewriter many times before, and I've been a full-time professional writer for over ten years now so my "serious writer cred" is more than sufficient, thanks. I just wanted model recommendations. I was looking for non-electric because I like to do this phase of work outside, and a typewriter over handwriting because I have an injured tendon that makes handwriting very painful. Thanks for the advice mixed in with the sneering though, that part was genuinely useful. Maybe don't assume anyone asking you about your hobby is a dilettante next time though?

I'm pretty sure you're the one being an rear end in a top hat. They gave some great generic advice for someone asking "How do I get a typewriter I can use to type notecards?" I didn't detect any condescension, and you don't have red text screaming "ASK ME ABOUT BEING A PROFESSIONAL WRITER/rear end in a top hat."

Yet.

Also, now I want a selectric.

(PS: manual typewriters will gently caress up your hands because of the pressure you have to apply to them, good luck with that)

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

This thread made me realize that I may have accidentally purged both my Newton Message Pad 120 and Newton 2000 with keyboard case, PCMCIA modem and Ethernet cards. I had a dancing baby animation in the 2000 complete with the music.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Trilineatus posted:

I'm pretty sure you're the one being an rear end in a top hat. They gave some great generic advice for someone asking "How do I get a typewriter I can use to type notecards?" I didn't detect any condescension, and you don't have red text screaming "ASK ME ABOUT BEING A PROFESSIONAL WRITER/rear end in a top hat."

Yet.

Also, now I want a selectric.

(PS: manual typewriters will gently caress up your hands because of the pressure you have to apply to them, good luck with that)

Pretty much everything in this quote... Including the part about wanting a Selectric, they kick rear end.

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Tiny Brontosaurus
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

Magnus Praeda posted:

Have you ever used a manual typewriter before? Or really any typewriter? I'm guessing not, so my suggestion is this:

You probably don't want to use a manual typewriter for this unless you are lugging it to your local indie coffee shop for some "serious writer" cred or something.

Yup no condescension there.

Sincere thanks to the two nicer better posts I missed though.

Trilineatus posted:

(PS: manual typewriters will gently caress up your hands because of the pressure you have to apply to them, good luck with that)

The idea is I can type left-handed better than I can write left-handed and the typewriter idea is actually a specific recommendation from my doc, but I forgot that I automatically don't know anything about my own life because I dared ask a technology question to goons.

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