Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't speak for variously-coloured pencils, but I've had a lot of success with a grid-ruled moleskine (I usually went for hardcover, but after accidentally ordering a soft cover, I'm warming up to it) and a Rotring 0.5mm mechanical pencil with Pentel 2H leads. For colours, I tend to use the Bic 4-in-one coloured pen (the one with the blue bottom and white top), though I don't bring that out often.
I mentioned in another post, but you need to try the Uni version of that Bic. I got a 3 color. I feels only slightly larger than a regular pen, and writes vastly better than the Bic. They’re more expensive in absolutely terms but still around $6.
Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
161–170 of 206 posts
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#162Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#163I've only had bad experiences with Parker pens and refills, they just don't flow and fill the line as nicely and constantly as Pilot Hi-Tec and other Pilot pens. I paid more than 20€ for a Parker pen with refills and it was worse than a 3€ Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint (which is my current favourite, I have it in black, red, green, blue and pink colours).
Parker refills are a nightmare. I have tested both the Indian brand and the French brand of QuinkFlow several times, and they are all horrible. Atrocious. I got some Monteverde, Pelikan and Schneier refills and they work well. If you can get a compatible Monteverde, it is great. Schneier is also very nice, but hybrid. Pelikan has the pelikan blue style, you either love it or hate it. QuinkFlow... ok, whoever says the…
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like the EasyFlow 9000 very well, because even on Clairefontaine paper it doesn't live up to its name. I have one in an Ohto Rays for the retro vibe, but it's the pen I keep in my bag to have something nice I won't mind giving away. Even compared to Ohto's stock gel refill, the EasyFlow just writes lousy. Try moving one nib size up with the Vanishing Point, especially if you're used to Western pens. Pilot's E…
I'll check out the Decimo! And maybe I should just size up my Vanishing Point nib. I've had it for a few years and it's just too scratchy. I have a few other fun (relatively) cheap fountain pens I like: brass Kaweko Sport, Muji fountain pen, other random finds. However, the downside of fountain pens if that if you don't use them, you end up with a bunch of clogged nibs.
I mean, I wouldn't turn my nose up at a $1000 handmade Pilot Urushi but I surely also would not buy one, not at least unless I meant to try to make flirting with ambassadors more than a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It's a beautiful pen and I'm sure it functions superlatively! Just that it belongs in far finer and less hardly used hands than mine. Good grief, I sometimes feel I make even my Decimo look like a sewing needle, and that isn't really at all a small pen, being by mechanical necessity about as long as its thicker, heavier sibling. But it also by far is the tool best fit to my hand of all the ones I've ever tried, and that's what counts, right?
(One final note worth making: the Decimo and Vanishing Point bodies are designed around the same nib unit, which I believe originated with the initial "Capless" models in the sixties. If you order a Decimo with the next nib size up from what you have in your Vanishing Point, then, the nibs and bodies will be fully cross-compatible!)
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're probably doing the lefty-handed-curl. If you adopt a really weird writing position you can write without smudges. Depending on your body-type it's either easy and obvious or very uncomfortable. I'm in the latter group so I just use a pencil.
Euch. That lefty-handed-curl is a solution proposed by the right handed world. The correct way to write as a left handed person is to turn the page ninety degrees.
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can buy a Uniball One-F (the premium body) and put Jetstream refills in there as a drop-in replacement. Note though that for longevity in engineering notebooks I don’t like to use Jetstreams because of the yellowing seepage problem over time. But for everyday throwaway writing this setup is the ideal best of both worlds.
What's the timeline for this? My undergrad notes from ~15 years ago have held up without obvious degradation. Those are mostly Jetstream inks on generic paper (some Oxford notebook). I swapped to fountain pens at some point when I discovered Noodler's. Bernanke Blue dries extremely fast. Though my TWSBIs from the time haven't held up well. They were fine when constantly used but they cracked in storage.
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first full time software engineering paycheque went towards a Lamy 2000. I've been using it for many years now and it's never let me down.
That probably costs more than I ever spent on all writing utensils I've ever owned. What makes this cost that much (other than they are owned by uniball)? The material certainly isn't worth that much? And the function would be replicated in the market for less? So, what makes it not some luxury bullshit?
Sometimes it's nice to splurge on high quality items - especially when you use them every day, like a pen. It's a little thing, but it brings pleasure every time you use it.
Not everything is about cost efficiency. You'll never regret buying quality.
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#168That's a very nice pen and I get the appeal. However, I've recently discovered Uni Jetstream pens, and I don't see ever buying anything else. There are nicer pen bodies out there but I've never used a pen that does a better job of putting ink on paper, reliably, every time, without ever skipping in the slightest, not requiring any significant pressure, working on every kind of paper, and drying instantly. For me, it…
have you tried pentel EnerGel?
Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#169Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen
#170There's no mention of this in the article, so be aware there's multiple posts online about QC issues. Rotring quality has been going down over the years, or their name outgrew the actual quality of the product. Current generation of 600s especially suffer from: cracking of the body (0, 1); but most importantly for pens, the joint part that screws into the bottom and upper part of the pen is extremely susceptible to w…
This story is so common that I wish there was an established economic term for it. Something like "reputational arbitrage" or perhaps "sentiment stickiness".
The basic idea is that a business can change its quality much faster than its reputation changes. If the business rapidly cuts costs and quality, their sales will reflect their reputed quality more than their actual quality for some amount of time. That gives them a window of very high profits where they can basically sell shit like it's gold.
Eventually the reputation catches up with them, but it seems to take a very long time to do so, if ever, so it's an extremely tempting business model.
There is a related but different effect where a brand establishes some level of cachet or meaningful emotional attachment back when the product was good. The product tanks, but people keep buying it even while knowing it's garbage just because of the emotional associations they have with the historical product.
The line between these two effects can be blurry. I think Pyrex leans more towards the former where people keep buying it simply because they don't realize it kind of sucks. But Jeep is the latter where it seems like everyone knows they'll spend half the time in the shop but people just like Jeeps anyway.