Lifehacker: Five Best Budget Pens
I love pens and notebooks. I have a ton of each, almost literally. I'm drawn to a hardbound notebook with an interesting cover and a pen that writes smooth.
I prefer rollerball or gel ink, and I think that's because their ink is darker and I can use it to put a thick line on my doodles. They also write smoother and when you are taking notes or jotting down ideas you can writer faster. At least it feels like i can. Like when you're a kid and wearing a pair of new shoes and you think they make you run faster. What a depressing day when you realize it's not the shoes that are slowing you down. It's your genes.
I do have one ball point pen that I like, and it makes this list. It's a Zebra. That's a picture of it up there. I discovered them when I was working at an office supply store in college. They write easy and have a fine point that makes detailed doodling super easy.
Anyway, pens. I like them, and I like this list. Read it.
Back when I made a lot of money I collected fountain pens. I have probably $30K worth of pens now, maybe more, so I use them when I can. I do prefer writing with fountain pens, though, and have since grade school. No, I'm not old enough to have written with feather-pens you had to dip in ink wells. I wrote with a cheap Schafer steel-tipped fountain pen for years. After than I like rollerball pens, then ballpoint, which are soulless pens.
ReplyDeleteI tried fountain pens in college when I sold office supplies. I could never get the hang of them. It may have been the pens I was using -- they were cheap fountain pens we sold for a while on the pen aisle. There was a certain mount of pressure you had to continually apply to the tip, and I could never get the hang of it.
ReplyDeleteI did want a Waterman pen when I worked there. I never got it for myself because even with my employee discount it was beyond what a college kid could afford.
Instead I bought a ton of the rollerball pens we had on sale.
Then, a few years ago I was in an Office Depot. They had a gross of their rollerballs on sale for something ridiculous like $5. I bought a gross of those and a gross of highlighters. The highlighters are great. The pens not so much. I'm still trying to use them all.