June 20, 2022

Remarkable Redux covid-19: day 814 | US: GA | info | act

When it was first announced sometime back in 2017, I picked up this cool new e-ink tablet called the Remarkable. At the time, I thought it would offer a great way to do what I do: read and take notes. It was OK—a bit sluggish, both the device itself and the way documents were synced to it. After only a couple of months, I decided it wasn’t for me and sold it on eBay.

Since then, Remarkable released the second generation: sleeker, faster, and more refined, or so it looks. Some friends bought this new generation, and they really like it. And while I didn’t play with it, I decided to give the Remarkable 2 a try. So I ordered on today and put my little-used iPad for sale on eBay.

I had the iPad Air 2 for two years, and I rarely used it—mostly for FaceTime calls with Kip and watching Plex when Autumn and Henry have the TV. It’s a great device, but I’m a MacBook Pro guy. The iPad is too limiting for getting any real work done. We thought about giving it to Henry, but we weren’t ready for that.

So, I’m hoping the Remarkable 2 is useful to me this time. I notice that their sync service Connect is subscription-based (of course it is), but I have a free trial, so I can see if I’ll actually use the dang thing. I’m hoping that my first use of it will be to edit Lipton’s Journal. I may not have given it a fair shake the first time, so I really need to come up with a strategy for adoption. I love my e-ink Kindle and use it daily, so the Remarkable should work very well for my professional needs.

Also, I still need a new MacBook, and since the new Airs were announced at WWDC, I’ve been thinking about one of those. They have a beautiful new design, a new M2 processor, and the ability to take up to 24GB RAM. While I do not need that much, I will get one with 16GB RAM, probably in their “Midnight” color. I think that configuration will do most of what I need it to do, and I’ll save $1K or so not having to get a Pro model.

And finally, Autumn and I both need new iPhones. We’ve been using the iPhone X for years now, and they are both starting to get quirky. Verizon will give us free iPhone 13s with trade-ins and a plan upgrade. Yes, it will cost us more, but unlimited plans will allow us to stream via AirPlay—something we have both avoided because of the 5GB-a-month data plan that we share.

Summer 2022 might be tech-upgrade season. I’m always fine with that.