Slog laptop

Many devices enable one to do both fun stuff and tedious stuff together, examples being conventional desktop PCs and Macs. Other devices emphasise the fun, for instance games consoles, mini-tablets, mobile 'phones, and it's quite hard to get them to do things like let you write reports and similar long serious screeds, do your accounts, pay your bills and the like. Having devices oriented towards socialising and entertainment is fine - specialising in functions that way seems rather appropriate.

However, if you have a problem with attention span, staying on-task and the like, you have no device which caters to your needs. You have the fun distraction and PCs and laptops which dangle the temptation of YouTube, this place, pictures of cats, music and so on in front of you, and it ruins your life because you cannot resist that temptation in the end, so bye-bye productivity.

So, here's my idea: just as there are IT devices which filter out the slog, so should there be IT devices which filter out the fun. I envisage a boring old laptop which displays text in one-bit colour, has no graphics or sound (not even a beep or a click), no optical drive, no multimedia and no web capability. It has a socket for a memory stick, built-in applications on its firmware which let you edit text and maybe format it to a very limited degree, a spreadsheet with limited capabilities, a calculator, and a pure command-line based interface. It also has a wireless internet connection, but only so you can pay bills, file tax returns and send in forms - it will not do hyperlinks. Even text-based arcade games are impossible because it behaves like a glass teletype - no cursor control. It's a dull brown-green khaki colour and has a dull green on brown display.

The reason for making it especially boring in the last few respects is to avoid the temptation to hack or tinker. I am slightly afraid, even as i type this, that i'm interested in the challenge of getting it to do something it shouldn't, and that i could've typed this very idea on it, which slightly interests me.

An old conventional laptop or other device does not fill this role because such a computer would be worn out in one way or another - knackered battery, dodgy keyboard, and more importantly, the challenge of making it work in the modern world would be there. No. I want this to be dull, dull, dull. I need this.

It should be fairly cheap, but not ridiculously so because the money saved on not making it "good" should be lavishly splashed out on making it ergonomic. In spite of being boring, it should be a pleasure to use, with a nice keyboard, good viewing angle and various features which encourage good posture, lack of tingly finger things and so on. So it's a nice laptop but it's absolutely yawn-inspiring.