Hemingwrite vs Other Options

The Great Human-Experience novel! (Forget "the Great American" novel--I aspire to much higher goals.) Every time I read an article about writing or writers, I get a hankering for “putting pen to paper.” But those days of using such writing tools are actually long gone for me. I keep challenging myself to become more and more “digital” and living my life in the cloud. (Heaven knows my head has been in the clouds most my life!) Most of what I write is with a computer. I no longer own a desktop PC, I am completely mobile with a laptop, tablet and phablet.

Just today (12/12/2014) I was reading about a new device whose market focus is writers. It is called the Hemingwrite and is currently being crowd-funded. My knee-jerk first impression was that it is so 1990’s retro--looking very much like other LCD small displays with nearly full-sized keyboards. (The latter can be had for under $100 on Amazon, while the Hemingwrite is reportedly going to cost between $400 to $500.)

The Hemingwrite promotes itself by claiming it is a “distraction free” writing tool. OK, I guess if you are an obsessive compulsive that needs to check your email, social feeds and texts every few seconds, that might be a benefit. But won’t you have your phone right alongside you anyway? Those wanting to work distraction-free on computers can easily do so by turning off wifi or closing the email agent (thus preventing emails) and muting or turning off their phone (a blood-curdling scream is heard in the reverberating distance). That is a much cheaper solution than buying yet another device to lug around. And speaking about “lugging,” the Hemingwrite is not a lightweight! It weighs 4 pounds, which is heavier than some laptops and decidedly heavier than all tablets today.

But coming back to how I “write”  these days: Lately, the idea of “writing” with a keyboard seems like a contradiction in terms and completely unnatural. Real writing is done with pen (pencil) and paper. And so I’ve come full circle. Instead of using a keyboard, I’ve recently discovered it is much more natural to use Smart Note (the “paper”) and a Samsung 12" Galaxy Note Pro with stylus. (In fact, this article was written using those items and subsequently exported and polished inside Google Docs.)

I already mentioned that the Hemingwrite weighs 4 pounds and will cost upwards of $500. Compare that to the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 which is $800 but weighs only 1.7 pounds. (Alternately, the Samsung Note 10.1 weighs only 597 grams and costs as little as $300.) Both run Android and have a great stylus, a much clearer and larger screen, promote natural handwriting that is converted immediately to typewritten text, plus numerous other bells and whistles. Using the aforementioned Smart Note, that text can be exported to PDF, uploaded to the cloud, or copied directly to any text editing app even an SMS texting app. Adding pages, inserting, deleting, and editing text is easy using the app’s “natural” gestures.

Really, my stylus-based solution is much more cost effective and productive than the Hemingwrite. But what if you absolutely want, no indeed, demand a keyboard?  Then your options are even less expensive yet more powerful. Chromebook laptops are as cheap as $200 on Amazon and can create offline and online documents . Once you are online, the offline docs are backed up to Google Drive. Don’t like Chromebook? No problem. How about a nice inexpensive Windows-based system also within the $200 to $300 range. Most of those have at very least Notepad or Wordpad. Beyond that, free programs such as Apache OpenOffice can be installed.

In short, I feel Hemingwrite is a step backwards, an unnecessary and archaic device adding more weight to carry around. Its predecessors had their heyday. Today’s solutions are cheaper, lighter, and more robust.

MyScript Smart Note (Android App)

When I first acquired my Samsung Note2, I thought I would be able to take handwritten notes on it in full screen like a tablet. Turns out that the best it could do was use sticky-note-sized area to write notes that were not transferable to editable text. Alternately, using the Samsung keyboard with the SPen I could write on a space at the bottom of the screen and it would immediately convert it to typewritten text within the text input area of several apps. For example, within an email, there are fields for recipient, subject, and body of an email. Within each of those text areas, depending on which was the current selection, when I start writing at the bottom of the screen (the area reserved for the Samsung keyboard), it would immediately convert what I wrote to typewritten text.

Lastly, there is an option, but only within some apps, that opens up a scripting window and permits several lines of text to be handwritten. This is a feature only found on the Samsung Note devices. But its implementation is limited and again the screen area is very small. So I bought myself the Samsung Note Pro 12.2 thinking that it would provide a larger input area. Yes and no. The area is only slightly larger and the ink size is correspondingly larger so that it is a “wash,” (no benefit). What I wanted was a full-screen entry area akin to a typical sheet of paper.

Enter MyScript Smart Note. I had seen iterations of this app on the Play Store for years but disregarded it because I thought I already had the functionality that it was bringing to the table. Turns out I was wrong. It brings exactly what I’ve been missing--full screen editing. One benefit for non-Samsung Note users is that the app is useful to them as well.Although using a finger as a stylus is possible, if you don’t already have one, I’d recommend getting a stylus if you want to use this app.

Besides full screen input, MyScript Smart Note provides very intuitive editing motions for inserting, joining and deleting text. If you buy the full version (under $3) you can add pages, add workbooks and more. Although the videos the company provides show many of the editing functions, it is more geared as a marketing video than a tutorial. In the right top of the app’s screen is a three-dot icon. Tap that and then tap help to get the full in-app tutorial with detailed explanations.

To be clear, MyScript Smart Note does not becoming another keyboard usable in other apps. It provides a full screen input area within itself. The text can later be copied and pasted into any other app. The document itself can also be exported to PDF. There are other features such as drawing and inserting pictures that I didn’t cover here.

As an ending note, my first app from this company was its calculator. With it, the user can hand write any formula and it is not only converted to typed text but it formula is resolved to whatever the result would be. For example, if you write “2 + 2” and wait just a moment, the app will display “2 + 2 = 4.” I find this much more intuitive and easier than using a 10-key calculator and I actually have known how to touch-type (without looking) on a 10-key since my teens. (My father was an accountant and taught me.)