wimagine@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> Where would the world be with out IE and Word?
Orgiastically happy with Word Perfect and Netscape Navigator? Or better
yet MacWrite and Cyberdog?
> totally "buried alive" in the 90s? Where would Window CE be with continued
> Newton OS competition?
What about the fact that PalmOS is kicking CE's ass? Hard?
> As for the advent of a new portable Mac, you have to be
> really slick to reinvent the wheel. The wheel being a portable computer that
> everyone wants. Lets face the PalmPilot is what is today because it forced
> users to work a certain way.
No, it is what it is today, because back in 94 or 95 when it was
introduced it was much cheaper than Newts, and back at that time, it
offerend the same functionality as a Newton. You have to remember that
the handwriting recognition didn't improve until the 130's. Around that
time, the Newt was an expensive joke. Palm 1's were something like $130.
Newt 110's were like $550.
> Graffiti is arcane, but it serves a useful
> purpose,
Sure does. It worked well so when the Newt's handwriting mangling didn't,
that if I recall Apple bundled it at some point. :) But I hate it.
Mind you I love my upgraded 2000. In fact, we're a four Newton family.
Wife's got a 2000 as well, and I've an old 110 and a 130 that aren't doing
too much. :) But let's face facts. The 110's handwrighting recognition
sucks major freshly shat unwiped ass.
> I dont want to work a certain way, but sometimes it is good. (I am learning
> UNIX just so I can use a command line.)
Yup, I hate it when I have to relearn how to write just to use a machine.
This is why I never used that Palm 1 that I picked up so long ago. OTOH,
the Newt couldn't recognize 1 out of 10 words of my handwrighting. To me,
both were shelfware. As a matter of fact, my PDA of choice back then
remained my HP 200 LX which ran rings around the Palm in terms of storage,
and CPU. I could run big complex Lotus 123 spreadsheets, decently sized
databases, write notes, etc...
For those who never heard of it the HP200LX was a tiny 3" by 6" XT clone
running at 8Mhz. It had a bundled PIM package - which I'm glad to say
seems to be Y2K compliant. I've got a 10Mb stackered PC card in it with
lots of software, and even a compiler. I could write code that would run
on it as well as my PC's. Big deciding factor: the HP had a keyboard I
could type on, and I got to be able to type pretty quickly on it.
The Palm and the Newt 110 sucked at data entry. I still occasionally use
the HP as a terminal to Cisco routers/switches and Sun servers. But not
for much else. I can't use my Newt for this since I can only use one
serial device at at a time, so I either plug in the keyboard or the
connection to the machine, and I'm not about to use the on screen keyboard
to enter router configs, sorry.
When I first saw how good handwrighting recognition was on a 130, I went
out and got one. Later I got the 2000. That one aspect made all the
difference in the world. Of course the PIM was a lot more integrated and
the assistant thing helped, but mostly it was the handwrighting
recognition that got me to chuck lots of money on it. :)
But, shit, by the time the 2000 came out, the market was already saturated
by low cost Palms. By this time most people got used to either Graffiti
and either really loved the size of the palm which fit in a shirt pocket,
or the low price.
For me, I'll take a bigger screen and handwrighting recognition over small
size and portability any time.
And then it died a fast death due to the iMoron.
> Its amazing what $100 million dollars will do.
Yeah, I'd like to get $100 million myself. :)
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