e-slates

 Having gone on about e-paper devices earlier, I finally cracked and bought myself an e-slate.

The sticker price in Australia is around $50, but I found an online grey market retailer who had the same device for $25

When it arrived, one of the hazards of buying from grey market importers became apparent - this was the Chinese domestic market model, not the export version and the packaging and manual was only in Chinese.

For a more complex device this might be a problem, but the device is so simple you really don't need a manual.

You just pick up the stylus and write on it, doodle on it, draw pictures, wipe the screen when done

It's incredibly nice to write on and the whole cursive writing process flows evenly, which seems to have the strange side effect of making my usually illegible handwriting less like the work of a drunken baboon and more like something that might actually have been produced by a human being.

How useful it will be in the long term I have no idea, but it's certainly an interesting device ...