Re: [NTLK] eMate vs Alphasmart Dana

From: David Orriss Jr (dave_at_davenet.net)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 21:36:29 EST


On Wednesday, December 04, 2002 5:59 PM,
Grant Hutchinson <grant_at_splorp.com> wrote:

>
> I've used Palms, and true... they're not *that* bad. I think you've
> hit the nail on the head when you talk of the human engineering
> involved. The Newton grows with me, learns with me... even all these
> years after I first purchased one. I outgrew the PalmOS minutes after
> I started using it. Yes, PalmOS (at least the 1-bit version) is
> graphically clean, interfacingly simple, and compact. But it's not me.
>

See I understand *this* point of view. I use my PalmOS to track data that I
want to keep in my shirt pocket. It's also *really* easy to sync it with my
desktop. And thanks to OBEX I can beam data back and forth between my Palm
device and the Newton. And since Pocket Quicken is quirky on the Newton sync
now I use PocketQuicken on the PalmOS and it works *great*. And my HandEra 330
is probably the best all-around PalmOS device out there.

But like you said, the Newton grows and learns and tracks information and your
life *better* than the Palm does. You'll never see a HyperNewt on the Palm.
Why? Because it's not possible to work and manipulate information in the same
neat clean fashion. And (at least until PalmOS 5 - I'm not sure if it's
different in OS 5 or not) the OS only provided you a single execution thread.
That means that you can't actually multitask anything. You can't be on the IRC
and then check your email on a Palm Device. But you sure can on a Newton....

Now, possibly on the Zaurus you might be able to accomplish much of what you can
on the Newton - but I'm not in any hurry to leave the Newton behind again. The
more I get back into it the more I remember why I loved it so much in the first
place.

> So maybe it's not fair to compare it to food poisoning. It's more like
> trying to make a meal out of empty calories.
>

LOL! Now *that* is a good analogy.

--
David Orriss Jr.
dave_at_davenet.net
http://www.davenet.net
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Linux - Chicken Soup for the Unix Soul

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