I got my first Newton MP2100 in April, then a used Handspring Visor Deluxe
in November. I am faster and more accurate with Graffiti on the Visor than
with HWR on the Newton, although the HWR is getting better since I moved to
printing (and installed alt.rec). It also helps as the Newton "learns" your
handwriting and you have greater accuracy to go ahead and move the sliding
bar under preferences to recognize your writing "more" immediately. But
Graffiti, at least for me, was easy to learn and very accurate from the
beginning.
Some of the specialty apps I was interested in (for wine buying and tasting)
were significantly better on the Palm platform--I may keep the Visor for
this reason alone (and for schedules, the ease of synching with Palm on my
iMac running OS 9 w/Palm Desktop 4 can't be matched by the Newton, AFAIK).
And the Visor is just so much more portable. My Newton often gets left
behind simply because it's more of a pain to carry.
But I do prefer the Newton for writing long notes, and I like the bigger
screen and (unfortunately lacking a serial cable or ethernet or wireless
setup, I don't have a way to do much with the notes except reread them and
admire their pithiness.) :-) All the notes for finishing my next novel, for
instance, are now in the Newton. (The Newton is also happy to inform me that
the book is due to my editor in 39 days. &$*#*. Thanks, Newton.) :-)
Writing a long note in Graffiti would be a hassle but I could do it if I had
to. I recently downloaded Adam Tow's cool NewtToDo and am going to move my
to-do list from Palm to Newton--I *really* like the subtask feature on this,
where you can list related to-dos under a master to-do, organize yourself
better and reduce your list of overall to-dos to a manageable number--Palm
doesn't have anything like these kinds of functions, to my knowledge.
I like a lot of things about Palm: the super-ease of synchronization (I wish
there was a "Newton Desktop for OS 9"), Graffiti works fine for me, most of
all the portability. And I like even more things about Newton. I guess I
have a split personality. But maybe that would also make me a prime buyer
for Paul Guyot's proposed PowerPC with a Newton brain transplant.
Jeff Abbott
jabbott_at_ninewire.net
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