Review: Geek-Pad

[stefanv]

I first heard about the Geek-Pad paper about a year and a half ago when on a quest for some decent graph paper in A5 or 8.5x5.5 size. The Geek-Pad paper is not that size, but I came across it in my search. I wrote to the manufacturer asking for some information, and they sent me a free sample of four pads. (I have no connection with the company, and was not asked to do a review, but I suspect they hoped I'd help spread the word.)

 

 

The paper comes in pads of 80 sheets. The paper is ivory in colour, and has a very versatile ruling. The front is ruled with lines with a 1/4" spacing, and faintly with columns with a 1/2" spacing. The column rulings vary in darkness and colour to help organize different things you might want to use the pad for. The back of each page is ruled with a fairly dark 1/8" by 1/4" grid, which is intended to show through the paper and provide additional guidelines. I'm not sure of the exact paper weight, but I'd guess it's 20# paper (~80g/sq.m).

 

 

The paper is FP friendly as long as your pen isn't too bold or wet. I got a fair bit of feathering with my medium-nibbed Hero and Cross pens using Waterman Blue-Black inks. I got a little bit with my medium-nibbed Pelikan M200. My fine pens, and a medium using Sheaffer ink did not feather appreciably. There was minimal show-through, and no bleed-through except with the Hero pen and Waterman ink. Note that the back side of the page isn't intended to be used. The texture of the paper is much like any good quality printer paper.

 

 

So far, I've only seen the paper sold directly by the manufacturer, through their web site at www.geek-pad.com. The site shows some samples of the kind of things the paper is meant to be used for too.

 

EDIT: The uneven shading you see in the scans is an artifact of the scanner. The colour of the actual paper is completely uniform. I should have used my trusty old ScanJet 4c instead.

 

EDIT: Updated weight (20lb) based on my measurement of the thickness of 80 sheets.

Edited March 3, 2011 by stefanv

[Silvermink]

Hm, I'm tempted to get a few to try for writing code.

[stefanv]

Hm, I'm tempted to get a few to try for writing code.

 

LOL. When I first wrote to geek-pad.com, one thing I mentioned that I thought it was silly that they used coding as an example of use, since no one writes code on paper any more. I guess I was wrong, twice now.

[Silvermink]

LOL. When I first wrote to geek-pad.com, one thing I mentioned that I thought it was silly that they used coding as an example of use, since no one writes code on paper any more. I guess I was wrong, twice now.

 

Yeah, I write out pseudocode on a semi-regular basis.

[jimhughes]

Nice slip stick there. That brings back a lot of fond memories. Mine was yellow Aluminium. Didn't go to an electronic calculator till board exams June 1976, when I was told not enough time to calculate manually sine and cosine values. Jim