Turning My Old Netbook Into a Writer Deck
I’ve long been keen on the idea of owning a dedicated writing machine. Call it a ‘digital typewriter’, ‘word processor,’ ‘writer deck’ or whatever you will, I wanted something portable with a keyboard and screen that allowed me to write and edit text files with zero distractions. I figured that surely there would be something reasonably priced out there on the market that fit this description.
It didn’t take me too long to find modern machines that fit the bill, including a rather elegant-looking range by a company called Freewrite. The problem? The pricetags.
Freewrite’s cheapest machine is over £300. Meanwhile, other machines by the likes of Kingjim Pomera, often came in at a similar price range. Even old-school Word Processors are demanding high price tags due to interest from collectors.
I’m not here to take snide shots at these machines, the companies that make them or the people who buy them. But I simply wasn’t willing to spend the kind of money that could buy a brand-new computer on what was essentially a less functional laptop.
However, it did get me thinking: why not just get an old laptop and turn it into a writer’s deck instead?
I’m not the first person to think of turning an old computer into a writing-only machine. In fact, there is a large thriving community of writer deck enthusiasts online creating all sorts of fun DIY machines from various computer components.
As amazing as some of the custom-built machines out there look, I wanted to keep things cheap and simple. So, I looked for the cheapest and (since I wanted portability) smallest laptop I could get my hands on. What I ended up with, was an Asus Eee PC.
I’ve already talked at length about the Eee PC before, but essentially, it’s a tiny netbook/potato from the mid-noughties that ‘boasts’ a 7” screen, 4 GB of memory and 512 MB of RAM. And I got it for a little over £20.
With the hardware secured, the next step was to install a new operating system. Any “headless” (software without a graphical user interface) 32-bit form of Linux or BSD would have done fine here. I ended up going with base Debian out of familiarity.
Changing your computer’s operating system is one of those things that seems like black magic if you’ve never done it before, and entirely mundane if you have. In any case, I’m not going to do a Debian installation tutorial here, but it was pretty much a typical installation. The only difference is that when prompted to select what desktop environment I wanted, I selected none.
A little wait later, and I had a fresh, if barebones, installation of Linux on the Eee PC. At this point, the machine didn’t even have ‘sudo’ (a program that allows users to execute commands that require elevated privileges). So that was my first task.
I logged in as a root user of the system by typing su - and the root password I set during installation. An ‘apt install sudo’ later, and I had sudo. Then I added my username (mike) to sudo privileges with usermod -aG sudo mike, logged out of root and logged out and back into my user account so the changes could take effect.
Next, it was time to download the software I wanted for my machine, namely the text editor. I’m not fussy when it comes to text editors, but Vim is my go-to. So, that’s what I went with. I also installed ‘curl’ and ‘git’ for plugins with the command:
sudo apt install vim curl gitI then went ahead and installed my usual plug-in manager, ‘vim-plug,’ following the developer’s instructions on Git Hub. For now, I’m only using one plugin called ‘Goyo,’ which makes Vim’s default appearance more ’writer-friendly.
To make vim even more writer-friendly, I made a few alterations to the .vimrc file (basically, Vim’s configuration file), the most notable of which was enabling spell-checking and mapping the spellcheckers I use to the F6 and F7 keys. To do that I added the following to the file:
map <F6> :setlocal spell! spelllang=en_gb<CR>
map <F7> :setlocal spell! spelllang=en_us<CR>I also set Goyo to start automatically when Vim is opened by adding:
autocmd VimEnter * GoyoI also wanted Vim to open automatically on start-up (following login). To do that, I simply added one line stating: ‘vim,’ to my system’s .bashrc file. Finally, deciding that I wanted this machine to be completely distraction-free (because you betcha we can still access all the corners of the World Wide Web on this thing), I disabled networking services and my machine’s wireless network adapter (I can always undo this later if need be).
And with that, the Eee PC was transformed into a simple, no-nonsense writing device. Here it is in action:
The Verdict
As things stand, I’m pretty happy with how this project has turned out. As much fun as it would have been to load a modern desktop experience onto the Eee PC, I doubt that I would have gotten much use out of the machine. But now, it’s a fun little writing companion.
So, will I be writing all my future blog posts and essays on the Eee PC going forward? Well, probably not.
As much as I love the Eee PC’s miniature size, its tiny keyboard and equally small screen don’t exactly make it suited for long writing sessions. Instead, I find myself using it more like a memo pad. Not only does its portability make it useful for quick notetaking, but the distraction-free environment lends itself well to journalling.
In any case, this turned out to be a pretty simple project, and much cheaper than forking over hundreds for a tailor-made writing deck. And I always love putting ‘obsolete’ machines to good use.