[HN Gopher] The Typeframe PX-88 Portable Computing System
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The Typeframe PX-88 Portable Computing System
Author : birdculture
Score : 42 points
Date : 2025-12-14 17:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.typeframe.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.typeframe.net)
| ZeroConcerns wrote:
| Yeah, lovely... But can we please stop retconning obsolete
| technology into something to strive for? The Epson, Tandy, Psion
| and Nokia almost-like-a-laptop systems of the time were pretty
| neat, but not magic.
|
| Really: you could lock me into a room with just a pencil and a
| ream of blank sheets, and _nothing of value would come out_ , and
| that's not because of the technology or the distractions, but
| just... well...
| pjdesno wrote:
| This is tempting.
|
| I fairly frequently leave my phone in the office and take a
| clipboard full of lined paper and a ballpoint to a place where
| I can write without access to the internet - I've got a number
| of published CS papers and at least one funded grant where a
| significant amount of writing was done in longhand on paper.
|
| Of course this would require a bit of software work and maybe a
| brain swap to make it into the sort of portable typewriter that
| I'm really looking for, but given this as a starting point it
| should be fairly easy.
|
| One question I have - what is the finished weight?
| iberator wrote:
| Fun and nostalgia IS value! Same as minimalism.
|
| It's fun to push old hardware to the limits and develop
| software/hw for it (such us wifi for apple 2 from 1979 hehe)
|
| Clunky hardware has one advantage too: It's usually a single
| tasking tool. Great for focus and running away from WWW.
|
| Your kid can play pac-man and Tetris without fear of popups,
| credit cards, scams, hate and porn.
| iamnothere wrote:
| To each their own. If there were a Psion that supported modern
| email, calendar, and task standards, with wifi sync, I would
| carry it most days. I basically never make phone calls anymore,
| and I always found the old greyscale LCDs to be very legible.
|
| Caveat: such a device should not be infested with shitty
| spyware like everything else these days.
| freetanga wrote:
| Isn't that a Palma from BOOX? And I believe there were 1-2
| competitors (Hisense phone?)
| DannyPage wrote:
| The website design and product reminds me of the c100 -
| https://caligra.com/
|
| But this makes a lot more sense, can DIY, and uses the full body
| with the embedded touchscreen.
| bitwize wrote:
| Holy crap, the front copy on this web site even reads like an 80s
| PC Magazine ad.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Needs microcassette drives like the original PX-8 (which I
| actually had for a time, although after it was discontinued and
| sold by liquidators for a fraction of its former list price).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_PX-8_Geneva
| c22 wrote:
| It looks like there'd be room to stick one to the right of the
| screen, above the main board. I'd prefer a minidisc drive,
| though, to bring it into the 21st century.
| ynniv wrote:
| anyone making a foldable cyberdeck? like this or the
| lisperati1000, but having the display fold over the keyboard like
| the nokia e90
| b800h wrote:
| Launch a Kickstarter to make pre-built versions of this
| IMMEDIATELY.
| mikerg87 wrote:
| Any comment on the battery life? My TRS-80 model 100 could get
| about 2 full work days on two AA batteries.
| rwl4 wrote:
| These kinds of products are drop dead gorgeous to me. Any time I
| see a device that has an Amiga 500 form factor or similar, I feel
| a compulsive urge to click buy. But after many, many of such
| purchases, I've learned my lesson.
|
| I buy it, I play with it a little bit, but the reality is my
| phone, iPad, or my laptop can do every single thing better.
|
| Maybe not with the same swagger. But ultimately, as I get older I
| realize I'm trying to produce with the least friction possible,
| and usually these devices have either highly constrained touch
| interfaces, shrunken keyboards, or both.
|
| I've always said that if somebody would create a new HP 200LX
| device with the same chicklet keyboard that I'd buy it in an
| instant. But now I realize that "ideal" device for me just
| reaches back to my contextual memory of state of the art devices
| of the time. A time when we couldn't type on a 6" screen, or use
| a detachable keyboard. So a chiclet keyboard you could thumb type
| at 40wpm was a revelation. But we have come a long way.
|
| In the end, alas, these devices really are just a novelty, at
| least for me.
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(page generated 2025-12-14 20:00 UTC)