BBC News has a story on writers who still prefer typewriters. Most are old-school writers, like Frederick Forsyth:

There was the steel-cased portable he used as a foreign correspondent in the 1960s. "It had a crease across the lid which was done by a bullet in Biafra. It just kept tapping away. It didn't need power, it didn't need batteries, it didn't need recharging. One ribbon went back and forward and back until it was a rag, almost, and out came the dispatches."

I'm old enough to have spent the first part of my college career on a typewriter (at the same time I was learning computer programming, ironically), and I can honestly say that I still occasionally miss the typewriter. The simplicity is useful and, as several people in the article (and the comments) point out, the cognitive process differs because of the amount of commitment required. (Brother still apparently sells more than 12,000 typewriters annually in the UK.)

[via metafilter.com]