Having spent a year or three experimenting with digitally capturing stuff that would ordinarily be handwritten (on Newtons, via Graffiti on various Garnet OS devices, on various Windows Tablet PCs, etc.), I've always come back to the conclusion that paper and writing implements have been around for millennia because they just work. Digital devices (for capture, as opposed to retention and access) still don't really have it over paper, in my book (so to speak).
I mentioned recently that I'd come across an interesting organizer system from Germany called an "X47". I managed to suffer through the web site's German-only, excruciatingly slow back-end and ordered some stuff from them, which finally arrived this last Monday. In short, it's fabulous stuff.
I got an A6-sized leather notebook, and a number of different inserts. What's unique about this system is that, rather than using a ring binding, this uses a system where the binder has three pairs of pins, one of which is spring-loaded:
The inserts, which come in a variety of styles, have a metal tube stapled into the spine, which fits into the pins:
This arrangement has several happy side-effects: the amount of available writing space is increased to the full page, since there aren't rings and holes taking up space, the width of the spine is reduced to a minimum, and you can use the page opposite your writing hand without having rings in the way. The variety of insert types encourages you to design your own organizer: I've got a one-day-per-page insert for my calendar, a "databank" insert (12 tabbed 6-page sections, good for collecting project-related "next steps"), and a lined insert (which I use for my "Autofocus" list).
Apparently, it's possible to buy this stuff retail in Amsterdam, so I'll be checking that out toward the end of next month while I'm there for a meeting sponsored by FSF-Europe. It's not cheap, but it's really well-made and the design is incredible. The same company makes a more inexpensive line, the X17, which uses rubber bands looped over the spine rather than the pin-and-tube arrangement of the X47.
The system comes in three sizes, A5 (too big), A7 (too small) and A6 (just right!) The A6 binder I got fits quite nicely in the back pocket of a pair of Levi's and has two ribbon markers as well as a number of business-card-sized pockets.
Every once in a while, you come across something that's just perfectly conceived and executed. This product gets my vote.
12 comments:
Not cheap!! My German isn't anything to be proud of but it looks like they want ~200Euro for one of those.
That's a lot of money for a pad.
That's for the leather binder. The pads are much more reasonable, and, as I mentioned, they've got the X17 line for folks who aren't into that level of quality...
Why was this on gnome's planet this has nothing to do with gnome.
I am happy this was on gnome planet.
Are you using autofocus?
Thanks, Christopher. I think if this person is complaining every time someone posts an entry that gets syndicated on planet which has insufficient "GNOME content", they must be doing an awful lot of complaining.
Yes, I've been using Autofocus--pretty successfully, too--for a couple of months now. I was one of Mark's "beta testers" for this system, and I'm impressed with how well it's working out for me.
Fascinatingly, "I Love" has an entry-free "blog" here on Blogger, cunningly titled, "GNOME Sucks".
I think I'll reduce the level of seriousness with which I took that comment. What's less than "nothing"...?
Speaking of free things, let's talk about gnome. Gnome is free as in beer. Another relation to beer is that using gnome, like drinking beer, gives you a headache. When are FOSS projects going to wake up. People use applications, they don't care about ideology. The two main environments for Linux really need to get this through their heads. KDE thinks we want eye candied Windows look-a-likes, so they give us bloated garbage. Gnome thinks we don't want bloat so it gives us nothing. All you FOSS fan boys are going to jump on me. But the fact is users like me are needed to tell you all what you need to fix. If you adopt this elitist attitude you'll get no where fast.
Oh, let's talk about your peevish and unsupported whining, while we're at it. Evidently, rather than take an aspirin or switch to some operating system more to your liking, you thought you'd try to give the rest of us a headache, too, it seems.
You've got a blog. Go grand your axe over there.
Anybody know if these are available in the United States? I can't speak German...
I know for sure that they aren't available reatail in the US (nor the UK nor Japan, for that matter). In fact, while I've found a lot of retail outlets for the less-expensive X17 line, I haven't been able to find an equivalent list on the X47 site...
As far as I can tell, the only way to order the X47 is to suffer through their shopping cart back end. Babelfish or Google Language Tools might help...
Hi. I found your site from the AF forum. Read through everything about the X47 and I have ordered the x17. Thanks for the tip. I hope it works for me. It looks like a very interesting system.
Picked up the A6 ModeSkin with calendar 2009 along with a few extra "databanks" and notepads for about $50 bucks.
The site was a pain but using google translate I was able to muddle through.
-CLay
@Clay, glad you were able to work things out and that the information here was helpful. I don't know whether this is any use at all, but the X47 and X17 stuff is definitely available at Cortina Papier, Reestraat 22, in Amsterdam—I bought some refills there. I hear rumors that they can be found in Tokyo as well, which I'll be investigating when I'm over there in the next week...
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