Re: [NTLK] I need a PDA, is a Newton a sane choice today?

On 3/9/2007 8:35 AM, Goodwin, Greg P. wrote:

> I will say that Newton did loose my information once, and it was on a
> flash card I came to use a lot. Flash media can fail over time. Other
> than that, the Newton is the most solid computer I've ever used. If I
> could have accessed a Ethernet, VGA, AND a storage card or some media, I
> would have used the Newton as a basic word processing, lite web surfing,
> E-mail, BBS'ing, IRC chat, chat client DESKTOP computer. Oh, and Mod
> and MP3 player.

True flash can wear out over time. And you tend to notice this more if
you buy a used flash card where you didn't know what it was used in
before. Sometimes cards are about dead when you get them. I put the
data that changes the most on a SRAM card. This way I am not using up
flash cycles with all the changes I make. I know that most people have
not ran into a flash problem as the Newt was designed to keep this in
mind and does wear leveling and only writes blocks that are changed.
Similar devices tend to rewrite large areas even if only a small are of
the flash was actually used. But still I use the SRAM card as a precaution.

It is very strange how many PDA manufacturers have not added a battery
backup even after all these years. It would not be hard to do and if
you ran out of battery at least you wouldn't loose your data. It can't
imagine why this has not been done in so many PDA's and Apple had it in
the very first newt!

-Dan

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