Quote:
Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden
I should have known there would be some real pen snobs. I still hand write my notes, when I find a good free pen I take as many as I can. I am going to empty that pen in a month or less if I don't lose it before then.
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There's nothing wrong with using those pens, but the excitement around them I don't get.
And you're not emptying that pen in a month. They're jamming often and failing within the month. That's why I'm saying it's like borderline running off with garbage. I constantly buy cheap pens and put freebie pens I get from conferences for clients to use/steal. I've seen the real world usage numbers on those things and they're pretty meh. I've tested a ton of pens. Pens I hate, I leave out for clients to use/steal after a while. Good stuff I kept for my own or other colleague's use. I write a lot too and I don't like looking like a knob checking through half a dozen pens to find a working one.
You can buy a box of 12 Bic Cristals for less than $3 that are better than freebie pens. Same for Papermate PMOP at around $0.40-0.60, Onyx at $0.75 and a few others in the <$1.00 range. I know this because I got sick and tired of pens that failed at the most inopportune times or blew up and leaked everywhere. I and a few others legitimately use up all the ink in our pens. The Onyx are good, but last only about 45-90 days before being used up. The closest to that look are the Pilot HiTech point which has a tendency to explode. Papermate PMOP last longest of that style of pen, but BIC Cristal are at a price point that better factors in theft of cheap pens. I find many papermate and pentels can get close to the end of the ink before failing. But those typically take like 1-3 years of near daily use to reach that point. We've done this a lot with the RSVPs.
Lots of freebies don't work out of the box and the ball nib fails or clogs soon after it is used/if it's rarely used. Most of the pen inserts still have a ton of ink left afterwards because the ball gets stuck and ink stops moving... unless someone is a pen sucker. I've met one before. Clean as F pen inserts and I bet he might get stomach cancer from all the ink he's ingesting.
The only thing worse I've ever seen to freebie pens is the Papermate Eagle. Those are complete trash that flex like a wet noodle in your hand. I don't think plastic straws flexed as much as these pens did.