Greetings,
I guess the PortShare demo time ran out since I can no longer launch Newton
Toolkit under Mac OS X. The price of the full version is CA$128. Since all I
use Toolkit for anymore is to produce the IMDb ebooks, I cannot pay that
price. I'm spending less and less time in OS 9 now so booting back just to
build the ebooks is a real pain. Any alternatives to PortShare?
I have sent feedback to the Mac OS X group about the X upgrade that broke
the Toolkit, but Steve doesn't think it's worth fixing. Or perhaps, he
doesn't want it fixed. That's pretty much the story with many other
peripherals I have that developers are not supporting under X. Planned
obsolescence.
Actually, I'm getting very close to dumping the UMP2K anyway. I just don't
use it anymore since Entourage is my primary contact manager now and Now
Up-to-Date is my calendar program. Neither one gets along well with the
Newton (Newtourage never worked well for me). I haven't got time to manually
enter the data in more than one place.
I was returning to Ottawa from a business trip to Calgary late last year and
the Newton failed to power up for the airport security screening. Switching
to two different sets of rechargeable alkalines didn't help. I found out
later that one or more cells in each set of four was exhausted (I don't want
to start a thread on rechargeable alkalines, but I'm much less impressed
with them than I used to be).As a result I had to return to the check-in
counter and my Newton was wrapped in a ski-bag, taped up and thrown on the
baggage conveyor. How it survived the trip unscathed, I'll never know. Even
with fresh batteries, the Newton doesn't want to work with them. I'll have
to try disposables and see if it starts working again.
This weekend I returned from a business trip to Amsterdam and I left my
Newton at home because I didn't want to risk it not powering up again. I
think the contacts in the battery compartment or possibly the connection to
the motherboard may be getting flaky since a fully charged Apple
Rechargeable Battery Pack causes spontaneous shutdowns if the case is
twisted a bit. It also seems to discharge too fast, even with the Newton
asleep all the time. I don't think I want to invest any money it trying to
get it repaired.
My needs are simple. Syncing with contact and calendar programs and the
ability to use my IMDb ebook. I love the Newton's note taking ability, but
since I hardly ever carry the Newton with me because the contact and
calendar data is always out of date, it is getting less useful. If I have to
switch to Palm or Pocket PC then I'll just create the IMDb ebooks for that
platform. I'd prefer wireless access but I'd have to investigate what's
available here in Canada. It will mean the end of the Newton ebook though.
Well, enough crying in my beer. Time to seriously consider the alternatives.
Hmm, maybe I should just use Text-to-Speech to record audio clips of the
IMDb movie entries and store them on an iPod. That would be a hoot to have
the iPod connected to a small set of speakers and have it read aloud the
movie entries while I'm standing in the movie store. Might impress the other
folks. :-)
...Tom
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Feb 01 2002 - 16:02:50 EST