AlphaSmart Neo 2 // Cheap and Awesome

[@dsouth7754]

I've noticed Neo 2's on eBay have slightly increased in price over the last few years. Not absurdly, though, and you can still pick one up for $30-$40. I own two and am thinking about grabbing a third. These babies fall into the category of something I want to have and use for the rest of my life. And these things truly, truly are a match in heaven with markdown and Scrivener.

[@fjtalleyauthor2242]

I got a third. You never know what might happen to the first two....

[@weirdmindofesh]

I'm a long time user of a Neo2. It is possible to loose saved works, if the RAM backup or main battery is flat, everything is lost. Sometimes a momentary loss of power can cause the system to crash and need to be rebooted. (Yes, it has an OS.) This is especially noticeable when finishing a file transfer to a computer.

[@arthurpizza]

That's good to know.

[@muskndusk]

You only lose your work if both the alkaline and the cell battery go dead; or if you change the AA batteries with a dead cell battery. The cell battery should be replaced every few years.

[@infopackrat]

The best feature is you can read the screen in the sun. Try that with your laptop or phone.

[@DDBAA24]

How are you soldering skills ? This thing screams at me "Please put a Pi Zero W inside" . Using the lite version of what was Raspian now 'Pi-OS' it will run and look great on that basic LCD. I'd have to take a look under the hood but if the keyboard is connected to the PCB with a basic USB pin out that would be awesome . If not you could always add a very small Arduino to interface with the Pi Zero so that the keyboard and Pi can communicate. Personally I'd go with an Arduino in there anyway because it looks like it has an IR sensor , used for transferring files over infrared. I'd want to keep that feature, again very easy to do with pre-programmed sketches that come with Arduino-IDE . That leaves the USB port which I would use for memory expansion or Video with expansion via MHL cable. Imagine running wordgrinder on this thing , you could even do some light text based browsing. Or go full GUI using MHL. I think you could get it done without having to modify the case , so if you wanted you could easily reinstall the original PCB . Just thinking aloud 🧠🧠🧠

[@dwighttaylor2184]

Just ordered mines from amazon. I've got my ksafes as well...... minimalist and distraction free

[@penguinvic4188]

Good basic documentary for those interested in the Neo 2 or just plain curious. It’s basically a typewriter keyboard with memory and a smallish list of special characters like Ë or ë, â , ç, í, as a sample selection and special symbols ¢, £, etc and a selection of Greek letters used in maths. Does it come with foreign language fonts? The answer is basically no, but one can improvise, then down load a document into a computer then edit and correct by using the computer replacement key command. I type a lot of Russian and Vietnamese. With Russian typing the following Roman keys can be used even if some of the Russian letters have different sounds i.e. ETYOPASHKXCBM36. For some Russian letters one has to improvise. Б becomes 6, ж is >|< or *, Ы becomes bI, Ъ becomes ~b, etc. Russian letters that are like Roman letters but back to front can be improvised, Я becomes R, И becomes N, etc. Others like the Russian Д which is like our D is simply D. Ш which is “Sh” in Russian becomes III or W. This is not perfect but after down loading into a PC and editing and correcting, I have a lengthy document in readable Russian. Ditto for Greek, or Vietnamese or any language that uses an alphabet of less than 30 or 40 letters. This gives you an idea how what looks like a very limited options machine in the Neo 2 can be made useful in an unlikely task.

[@PalinuroRex]

Dude the Vim interface is awesome

[@grumps5940]

In the UK there's hardly any of these.. and when they do have them they are really over priced.. £99/$132+ I managed to get one of these from the school I work in for free, it was being thrown away. It's got like 4 missing keys.. ESC, File8, ; and < and the space bar is missing its membrane. I managed to fix the space bar with a bit of rubber and tape, not sure how long its going to last though. Took me about a hour to work out how to put the space bar back on..

[@arthurpizza]

That's awesome.

[@zchawk]

Yeah I ended up having to pay £60 (plus import tax) to get one from the States. Still, only a tenth of the cost of one of those new word processors that are absolutely all style over substance, and lack the multiple save files options and basic stuff like arrow keys. A worthy investment.

[@muskndusk]

You can find them on ebay for £50 plus postage from US.

[@grumps5940]

@@muskndusk Just managed to pick up a fully working one for free. :)

[@muskndusk]

@@grumps5940 Great! Have fun.

[@dacracking5768]

if its saved to ram, as soon as the power turns off, because it is volatile memory. Do you mean its saved to the inbuilt storage? A bit like the hard drive or solid sate drive on your computer?

[@selw0nk]

5:59 I can't even tell you are holding a gimbal. It looks like someone is filming in front of you.

[@allissondiego1989]

Sadly not available in my country. And extremely expensive to import. Anyways, at least I can see this great review.

[@shaneharrison6770]

Where do you live, Allisson? I use Alphasmart 3000s for my job and have a spare or two lying around. Shoot me a message.

[@allissondiego1989]

@@shaneharrison6770 I live in Brazil 🇧🇷

[@StarFireLiz]

Is there a way to speed up it putting the text on the computer? Is it fairly speedy or is this something you may want to just plug in, start, and go do stuff, if you have a lot typed up?

[@fjtalleyauthor2242]

Yes. You can press CMD ALT S which takes you to the transfer speed. There you'll find four options from 1 which is very slow to 4 which is very fast. The fastest speed is somewhere north of 800 words a minute, I believe.

[@penguinvic9892]

Or you can do what I do … plug the Neo2 into my computer and press sent. Then make myself a cup of coffee, watch the TV news, check progress during the advert breaks …

[@OlaftheGreat]

I got 3 off ebay for $50

[@driedfruit1238]

I had one of these, lol.

[@mungervu4618]

Can I use this to type Chinese?

[@janKanali]

Munger Vu just type in pinyin

[@janKanali]

you can type accented characters

[@janKanali]

search alphasmart neo 2 accented characters

[@penguinvic9892]

While you can type in Pinyin, there’s the drawback that some Pinyin words / sounds have multiple characters, so this is not so good if you intend to then transfer this later to a Chinese language character font. If the document is huge, there is some sort of 4 digit number system, so a certain character could be say, 2745. They used something like this in the old days to transmit Chinese but it’s quite cumbersome. Anyone who wants to type Chinese probably should by a Chinese language device for that purpose. Or simply by a laptop configured for that purpose.