r/Astrohaus

Any speculation about the new product announcement on Friday? They said they have teamed up with a favorite brand partner. I'm not sure what brand or product that could be, but I'm intrigued and excited. Any ideas?

I've already emailed support, but I'm freaking out here! I was writing on my Alpha (firmware totally up to date!) when it suddenly said "saving draft" for a few seconds and then the draft I was working on totally disappeared. It's no longer in my Postbox account, where I saw it this morning, and is gone from my device. It's not in the available drafts to cycle through, it wasn't in the list of text documents when I plugged it into my computer. I am devastated. It was almost 10k words. I will literally never use this device again. Any ideas? Is there any way to recover this? I have no idea what happened.

Update: I have a theory. I wonder if I accidentally opened this draft in Sprinter (which would remove it from my device) and then there was a sync error between Sprinter and Postbox. Whatever happened, I think it’s gone gone.

The year was 1974. I'd already written two novels that I knew were apprentice work. I believed I was ready to write something publishable. I had a story, an outline and a 100-page hand-written day-in-the-life of the protagonist.

I had beat to hell the portable Smith-Corona that had carried me through college, and I was in the market for a new typewriter. My mother said wait a minute. She hauled out a standard desktop Underwood typewriter from her attic. Actually, the machine was so heavy because of the cast iron frame that she could budge it, and I hauled it out. The typewriter had been in the attic since 1956, when the original owner, my uncle, died.

I had it cleaned and oiled and installed a new ribbon. No repairs necessary. The machine worked beautifully, so much more solid and responsive than my Smith-Corona.

I started by sketching out a scene in longhand. I typed in the standard format of the day, one inch margins, typescript double-spaced. I would not move to the next page until the one I was working on was as a good as I could make it. When I completed a page, I would take it out of the typewriter, pencil-edit it, and retype the page. Three, four, six, ten or more times, until I had a page I could be proud of. The idea of a "rough draft" was unacceptable. The process led me to a breakthrough insight: my best ideas for improving the scene came in the act of retyping.

I worked two hours a day, six days a week for four years to complete one draft, but that was all I needed. The manuscript found an agent and a publisher in a major press very quickly. The book got rave reviews across the nation and won a citation from what is now the PEN Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Now thirty-eight years later THE DOGS OF MARCH is still in print.

And I still own the typewriter my mother gave me. It still works. I still use it once in a while for that wonderful feeling of striking a key.

Any news on the next version of Traveler, and if it (oh please, PLEASE) will have a backlight?

I just received the alpha, as a gift in the mail, yesterday. I have had it charging for over 12 hours with the cable that came with it.
It still will not turn on.
Any advice? Should I just go ahead and try to return, and replace, it to stave off any future headaches?
Not the best start, tbh.

Thank you.

Hi everyone,

I've been unable to use my Freewrite Smart Typewriter (Gen 2) for two days now. The device can see Wi-Fi networks and connects to the internet, but gets stuck on "Checking connection to Postbox. Please wait..." and then the connection drops.

I performed a factory reset thinking it was a hardware issue, which only made things worse — my firmware reverted from 1.5.10 to an older version.

I've contacted support and they said the engineers are working on it, but no explanation has been given about what's actually happening or when it will be fixed.

I live in Turkey so the time difference makes communication difficult, and there is no authorized service center here.

Has anyone else been experiencing this? Any updates or workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everyone. I have an old Gen 2 Freewrite and suddenly it can't connect to the internet. It can connect to wifi, but I'm getting the "Unable to connect." I contacted the company, but they say they can't do anything. (No parts?). I tried resetting, other wifis, ​prayer and threats and nothing worked.
Anyone find a way out of this? I used this thing to write my first book, and I use it to write short things still. It's sentimental to me to keep it running, and swapping around a usb cable would be a pain. (Especially since there's no way to delete drafts).

I am a holder of Gen 2, and mine loses data on a regular basis.

I heard from Astrohaus that the issue has been fixed with Gen 3, and given they updated the software, I'm hoping that this is truly the case.

So any Gen 3 user with data loss experiences? I am genuinely curious as Freewrite is still the gold standard of writerdecks when it comes to hardware aesthetics.

Feel free to comment if you never experienced any data loss with heavy use of the device. (maybe 50k words?)

Thanks in advance.

Thinking about selling my mint freewrite. Literally used it once and its been safely back in the box since. Looking to get 800 obo (i know, you can buy a new one, but it won't be mint lol). Just wanted to see if anyone would be interested. I can send pictures when I get home from work in a few hours.