Alpha Omega?

While littering up the Nano 2013 site with my usual Rhino-based nonsense, I came across something in the AlphaSmart subforum that gave me pause. I checked it out, and the rumors are true:

We have reached the end of our NEO 2 inventory, and we will no longer be producing any additional units—but this isn’t goodbye.

File this under "I knew this day would come and I'm surprised it took this long." Yes, Renaissance Learning née AlphaSmart has ended U.S. production of the Neo 2, which I suppose makes it the final model of the line. For all the mock-rivalry between the Typewriter Brigade and the AlphaSmart Nano groups, I am truly sad about this news. I'm a Neo owner myself, after all, having traded in my pimped-but-battered Pro model last summer. It's become central to our homeschooling with my middle child, and I'm actually concerned about taking it away for the month of November as I attempt a multi-device Nano.

The AlphaSmart was and is a wonderful piece of single-purpose technology: durable, inexpensive, highly portable, and doggedly compatible with thirty years' worth of computing devices through the alchemy of cables and adapters. Their market niche has been eroded, though, through the advent of netbooks and (now) full-featured tablets that can be had at the same price point. Add in a $30 Bluetooth keyboard and you have a passable substitute that's also 'Net connected. What could be finer?

Of course that's just audience-baiting on this blog. I don't believe for a moment that a keyboard-and-tablet solution is an acceptable replacement. AlphaSmarts have always been praised for their insanely long battery life and their utter simplicity and utility. It's the modern typists' portable typewriter, a Lettera for a new age, and now, like its inky mechanical predecessors, it's been obsoleted. At least it's in good company.

Nothing Grows in Consumption Gap

From my 1943 Hemes Baby

The Future of the Past

Kind of random today, I should never post before the brain is fully awake. One of the most imperfect things about the Kindle is its name. I'm sure some marketing wonk was thinking "kindling a spark of excitement" or the future, or something, but books + flames = bonfires in my mind, and that never ends well. I think the Kindle is a first step, and if it succeeds, we'll see much better steps down the road. I've been a big naysayer of the small version, but this bigger one... nice.

It's about time (part 1)

Welcome to the Club

• Is AS badly hurting RenLearn's bottom line? (discussion on flickr)

RIP?

Going (going, gone) postal

I think we're due for another "sign of the times" downer post. Lots of news swirling about the U.S. postal service this week, and none of it very promising for us lunatics who still get unnaturally excited about pens and paper and film in this brave new digital world.

• First, word that the USPS is considering petitioning to deliver mail only five days per week instead of the currently mandated six, the other no-mail day being determined according to traffic analysis. Bad news if your birthday falls on a Tuesday, as that has been cited as a particularly slow day. No cards for you!


• Next, delivery routes are being consolidated, too. If this was last summer, you could probably blame fuel prices for the hit, but now it's the good old recession to blame. Don't worry, gas prices will go back up this year, and we'll be able to drag the old scapegoat back out of the pen.
  


• Finally, in anticipation of this year's first-class stamp rate increase, word that the classic coin-operated stamp machines are going the way of, well, anything coin-operated really. Citing expense of maintenance and general lack of interest from the public, they're being phased out in favor of the high-tech stamp-and-ship-and-weigh machine that's always out of order. I smell a collecting opportunity here, folks. Who will be the first to rescue one of these old machines and creatively repurpose it? (Olivander, I'm looking in your direction.) I'm thinking it's a short hop from stamp machine to coin-op gum dispenser.

The grand irony, of course, is that I was just reading a Consumer Reports article (in a paper magazine, delivered in the mail) about how the USPS has the best deal going in terms of overnight shipment, better than the commercial carriers by far. Commercial carriers aren't saddled with declining interest in their main service -- door to door mail delivery -- with a revenue stream that's rapidly drying up -- advertising and catalogs.

Have a swell day!