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Notes on my Remarkable tablet

tomcritchlow.com

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#41
post #22

I actually have a hard time loving my remarkable. Such incredible ergonomics wasted by poor software. It could be such an impressive device with some extensions (not even apps) marketplace. I don’t want it to be another tablet with YouTube but I want to be able to scribble on my daily calendar and boom, with OCR it’s now on my caldav. I want to be able to make LINKS between pages. Like, let me write an index. Let me…

I had a similar experience. When I had one, I used it frequently but when I lost it, I never felt inclined to buy a replacement. I never loved it.

I feel that this _type_ of device may have a mass-market future but we are a few generations away from a device which could have mass-market appeal. The software is clearly not good enough but even in terms of hardware, the slow e-ink refresh rate makes for a painful UX. So despite all the technology, doing anything more than using it as an etch-a-sketch was irritating.

Also what I came to realise is that most of the stuff that I fill the many half-used notebooks lying about my home is of very temporary value - often only useful for an hour or a a day. When I switched to using the Remarkable, the issue of losing information went away but not in a good way; I now felt burdened with keeping the Remarkable "organised" - trying to categorize pages, de-duplicating notes, "garbage collecting", etc. Paper notebooks, which you fill and toss away don't burden you with this task.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#42
post #9

I was a big fan of my RM2, but found the move to the subscription service a couple years ago to be off putting. Sure, I can turn off WiFi, or just use the network to ssh into it, but it felt less than great. I recently got a Supernote to replace it and so far love it. The company seems a bit more open and less likely to try to push me to some kind of subscription/cloud thing. They promote the “works great offline, no…

Since I am a happy user, I will mention rcu[1]. It is paid, but it makes remarkable more what it should have been ( no subs stuff ). To be fair, I never tried Supernote.

[1]http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#43
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is actually that your usb-c receptacle broke free from the PCB inside. Open and you'll see. I emailed them about it a while ago. They majorly fucked up the design. The connector is on the very edge of a very thin finger of a thin PCB. There is nothing holding it to the case, only the few solder points to a thin PCB. They did not care. I sent photos, explanation, and a rather long essay as to why this should…

If you use a case or folio, i recommend a wireless charger receiver that you just permanently leave in the port, no plug fatigue to worry about then. something like this: https://pakshwe.com/product/type-c-bottom-left-top-right-sid... Otherwise there are magnetic usb adapters that let you charge or transfer data with a cable still... while avoiding plug fatigue.

mine is now bulletproof. epoxied into place forever. it'll survive doomsday

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#44
post #6

I'd buy one if it supported reading books from the two platforms I use: Kindle and O'Reilly.

I use calibre for managing my ebooks, syncthing for transfer and koreader to read them. I removed the DRM from buyed books, since koreader can't decrypt them.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#46
post #9

I was a big fan of my RM2, but found the move to the subscription service a couple years ago to be off putting. Sure, I can turn off WiFi, or just use the network to ssh into it, but it felt less than great. I recently got a Supernote to replace it and so far love it. The company seems a bit more open and less likely to try to push me to some kind of subscription/cloud thing. They promote the “works great offline, no…

>... but found the move to the subscription service a couple years ago to be off putting This is so common these days. I'm still waiting for the PineNote to become stable enough to be usable by non developers. It's FOSS, so it would be immune from the subscription service plague, but they're progressing really slowly. https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/

I'm exactly the same. I'd really like a large format e-ink reader for papers, notes etc. But at that point I don't want to pay for a closed-off locked-down device I can't control.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#47
post #9

I was a big fan of my RM2, but found the move to the subscription service a couple years ago to be off putting. Sure, I can turn off WiFi, or just use the network to ssh into it, but it felt less than great. I recently got a Supernote to replace it and so far love it. The company seems a bit more open and less likely to try to push me to some kind of subscription/cloud thing. They promote the “works great offline, no…

If you have somewhere you can run a Docker container, just spin up an rmfakecloud server and ditch the company's network altogether. Works really well.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#48
It is positively bizarre that HN will scream blue bloody murder about "the apple tax", "apple spying", "poor repairability" and so on, and yet cannot shut up about a device that:

* REQUIRES a cloud subscription and active data connection to do its most core functionality: OCRing text you write on it

* costs more after a year or two than an iPad with Apple Pencil

* is completely unrepairable; no parts availability, no service options, etc and has no warranty unless you pay extra

* depends on a cloud service run by a company located in a country infamous for both state and commercial espionage and intellectual property theft

* has no theft protection, no on-device encryption, no end-to-end encryption, etc.

An iPad can do everything the Remarkable can do, on device, no connection or cloud sync/service required, has infinitely larger accessory and software ecosystem, can be repaired at almost any corner phone repair shop and major electronic store chains, and has best-in-market security from the hardware itself to end-to-end encryption for its built-in cloud sync functionality.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#49

I would love something like the Remarkable tablet. However I'm not buying a niche hardware product to have my data held hostage by monthly cloud sync fees. Let me use Nextcloud or a service I've already paid for.

100% this. If someone can come out with a product I can sync to my own service, I’m buying it.

You can self-host rmfakecloud, an open-source reimplementation of the reMarkable cloud. You just ssh into the device and use a DNS trick to swap it out.

Re: Notes on my Remarkable tablet

#50
post #9

I was a big fan of my RM2, but found the move to the subscription service a couple years ago to be off putting. Sure, I can turn off WiFi, or just use the network to ssh into it, but it felt less than great. I recently got a Supernote to replace it and so far love it. The company seems a bit more open and less likely to try to push me to some kind of subscription/cloud thing. They promote the “works great offline, no…

For this exact reason, I decided to instead buy Surface Pro 9 and installed Ubuntu Linux on it. It works amazingly well. Moreover, all my notes are automatically converted to PDF and syned to my gitlab.
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