A farewell to the reMarkable
Since the beginning of September I've been making an effort to take part in the future of note taking with the help of the reMarkable paper-tablet. It's been an interesting journey, but now it has come to an end.
After less than a month of my first semester here at the University of Oslo, I decided to forgo paper. I'd already accrued a surprising amount of paper by my third week here, and I was not prepared to continue doing that for at least three, maybe even five years. That's when I remembered something that had been vigorously advertised at me throughout my last year in high school; namely the reMarkable paper-tablet. It seemed like a god-send at the time. It looked to be all that I had been looking for in a note-taking device. It promised to be distraction-free, long-lasting battery wise, and a paper-like surface to write on. I was excited, to say the least. So, in early September, as I tired of using paper, I went online to a second-hand market and searched on out. They were selling for around £400 at the time, which is a notable saving on the £500 you'd have to part with to get a brand new one, but not the kind of savings that would make an economist drool. Despite the price being a bit of a sticking point, I went for it. I picked it up the same day from a nice man in locally in Oslo, and got it home. The e-ink screen had been something I had been curious about, having used a Kindle for a few years. Refresh rates are never spectacular on e-ink, but this seemed like the best I'd encountered so far. The day after, it was already occupying the tablet room in my backpack, snuggly resting between my laptop and my lunch. As I started working on a bit of calculus, it seemed like all I'd ever wanted. Writing felt like the rough paper I had become used to over the years, and the dotted paper pattern was working excellently, as expected. The honeymoon had begun. In the following months the reMarkable accompanied me to group lessons and lectures all across campus. It was where all my notes for everything from calculus to scientific modeling and structures for programs lived. It seemed like bliss. It all worked well, and weighing in at 350 grams, it was light enough to not even be noticeable compared to everything else I carried. I also started loading a few of the books that had been made available as e-books on to the tablet, reducing the necessary weight even more. This was the start of the end. Larger books were slow to load, taking upwards of a few minutes to show properly in my experience. The problems didn't end there either. As I kept turning the pages, the loading times kept being a problem. Not exactly the best experience for looking up things I needed to know, to say the least. This resulted in me moving back to the solution I had used for e-books prior to acquiring the reMarkable; my MacBook Air. That honeymoon feeling was starting to fade, but the writing experience was still solid I felt. I felt no regret having bought it. Well, not yet, anyway. It wasn't until October that started to unravel as well. A problem I remembered reading about on r/RemarkableTablet (a place you should definitely visit if you're considering this device) and in a few reviews finally caught up with me. The software. I remember reading something about the software seeming a bit odd, and not on par with the hardware of the device. I'd noticed this since day one, but only after prolonged use did it become properly apparent what they had meant with this. Everything takes at least one press more than it seemingly needs to. This in and of itself wouldn't be too bad, but it's an issue compounded by the fact that it's got an e-ink screen. It therefor suffers from having to do everything at the speed of a pensioner crossing the street. This isn't a problem if you're say; doing art, or planning out a project. No, not at all. In these scenarios it's maybe even advantageous to take it slow when doing these kinds of things. But, if you're trying to take notes on calculus from a man who's been doing nothing but maths for the last 30-odd years, it's less of an advantage. Note-taking became more and more difficult as the speed of lectures seemed to steadily increase as the semester went on, until the point where it became virtually impossible, and the honeymoon feeling finally let go. It all went swimmingly until I made any sort of mistake that had to be corrected. At that point I had to dive into the mess of a menu system that I had at my disposal. I had to open the tools menu, pick the eraser, maybe change to the right type of eraser for the job based on how gross the mistake was, then close the menu again. And then, the same process again, but selecting the pen again. This doesn't sound too bad, until you remember that the e-ink screen made every singe step along the way take about three times as long as you'd expect it to. This, along side the fact that it always had the pencil preselected when I created a new notebook, compounded over time to create an increasingly frustrating note taking situation. Now, why did I not just leave the menus open, or minimise the like you can do? Well, I'll tell you. The overly large buttons. They got in the way of doing almost everything. Either I'd accidentally close the notebook by pressing the massive "close notebook" button in the top right corner, or I'd just end up selecting an entirely different tool to what I wanted by accident. Either that, or it would just en up covering up a surprising amount of screen space that I quite frankly didn't feel like loosing on a note-taking device that was already considerably smaller than normal A4 paper. It also turned out to eat pen-tips like there was no tomorrow, something that messed quite heavily with my calculations about the savings I'd eventually make from using it since it seemed like I'd have to buy a new eight-pack every semester. In the end, I moved back to using my TWSBI Eco alongside some 90 gram dotted paper I'd picked up right before buying the tablet, which I'm still using today. I'm now once again on the lookout for a smart way of taking notes without creating comically tall stacks of paper in my apartment, and it's looking like I've found a solution. The iPad Pro 12.9" seems to be just what I'm looking for. It's got a nice shortcut for changing to the eraser in most of the note-taking apps I've seen so far, and is in general more snappy. It is considerably heavier than the reMarkable, but that is made up for by the ability to do way more of my daily work on it, to the extent that won't necessarily need to carry a laptop every day anymore. I can write the Python code that I need to, take my notes with the Pencil and have a keyboard for writing things like this, as well as creating LaTeX documents. I will to this end be looking in to getting an iPad Pro at some point in the not too distant future. I'll hopefully also be writing a new post about how that's going as soon as it's honeymoon feeling is over, and it's back to the daily grind. Fare well my dear reMarkable. You served me well, despite not intimately being the companion I needed. As an after word on the reMarkable paper-tablet: It's not a bad device by any stretch of the imagination. It's wonderful device for many things. It's amazing for doing art, and planning out projects. It's non-distracting nature is not to be under-estimated, especially not for planning. It doesn't just allow you to, but encourages you to take a bit of time when doing your work. It also has the advantage of removing the anxiety of starting on a new page, as it doesn't matter if you mess it up. Just delete it, and a new one can take its place. No page is ever wasted. If this sounds like device for you based on this description, you're probably correct in thinking that it is. It just wasn't for me. My slightly sloppy note-taking that constantly requires correcting didn't jam with it's lack of urgency to the point that I wanted it to. It's still a lovely device, just not for what I wanted it for.