From: Nowhere Man (nowhereman77_at_mac.com)
Date: Thu Jul 29 2004 - 14:35:56 PDT
On Thursday, July 29, 2004, at 02:09PM, Martin Howard <mvhoward_at_mac.com> wrote:
>I've quickly discovered that while the Newton certainly does live on,
>it's
>much more of a tinkerer's and hacker's device than the currently
>available,
>mass-market PDAs. Yes, it does to WiFi, it does do Bluetooth, but
>unless
>you're willing to spend hours sifting through FAQs, mailing list
>archives,
>and googling for lost documentation (with 8 out of 10 links being out of
>date and no longer functioning), this is not the PDA for you. Even with
>documentation, you need to spend a lot of time mucking about and testing
>things to get them to work for you.
You're right, the Newton has become a tool for hobbyists, but didn't you expect that?
If you're in the market for a car and you just want to turn the key and drive, you don't go out and buy a classic hot rod. You buy a brand new Honda. If, on the other hand, you love cars and you enjoy getting under the hood and getting your hands dirty, you would much rather own a '66 Mustang. Not in spite of the fact that you have to devote lots of TLC to, but _because_ of that very fact. The same applies in this case.
That being said, I think you may have just been unlucky with at least a few of the things you talk about...
>I spent probably ten hours trying to get Bluetooth and WiFi working.
i have never played with BlueTooth or Blunt, but I had my WiFi setup functioning in very little time. Maybe I just got lucky and it worked on the first try, but the setup seemed very simple to me.
>I get packages onto the Newton using NewTen and my homebrew cable (I
>have
>the SER-001 board installed). NewTen works, but seems to be very
>sensitive
>to how you start the connection. I have to press the "Open" button in
I don't think I have ever had a problem with NewTen. I only wish it could install packages over TCP/IP so I could avoid using Escale, which is much less stable from my perspective. But it does work and I use it to install packages over a WiFi link on a regular basis.
>I downloaded and installed NewtSync, which does work over TCP/IP and
>WiFi.
>It did a marvellous job of transferring my Adress Book entries to the
>Newton's "Names" application, but then presented me with an error
>message
>when I tried to sync the iCal entries:
>
> "Please install iCal 1.5.1 or higher".
>
>As it happens, I have iCal 1.5.2 installed. Oh well.
>
NewtSync is a wonderful tool. Though it has some serious limitations. iCal syncing was never the best, but you should be able to get it working to some extent if you download and install an updated plugin from...
http://homepage.mac.com/nowhereman77/hacks/newton/index.html
-- -- Nowhere Man -- nowhereman77_at_mac.com -- http://thenowhereman.com -- -- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
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