Re: [NTLK] How do you use your Newton?

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008 05:16:02 -0700 (PDT), RedJazz wrote:
> Hi. This thread is about we, users of Newtons, to tell each other how
> we use our Newtons, and maybe give each other some interesting ideas.
> I know a similar thread was on the Newted Community Forums, but since
> the server is down, I decided to revive the thread. Besides, most
> things on the NCF were outdated anyway.

Name: Rhonda Hyslop
Occupation: Engineer
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Newton collection: two MP2100s, a keyboard, three power adaptors, and
miscellaneous cables and cards, including a WaveLAN Silver and a 14.4
fax modem, a 128MB compactFlash card for my primary storage, and
probably some stuff I forgot about. I probably have at least two serial
dongles somewhere, and I recently got a USB dongle from Notwen.

My Newton story:
I saw a Newton 2000 for the first time when I was in university. A
friend had one, and let me play with it for a little while. A couple of
months later, I went out and bought myself a 2100 just as Apple Steved
the Newton, and managed to get what the store told me was probably the
last one in the region. They apologized for opening the box before I
got there, but they just had to admire it. :-)

I used it primarily for school for the next four years, taking all of
my class notes on it with pen input and using MoreInfo to keep track of
classes and homework as well as classmates and professors. Once or
twice, a classmate asked me for notes for a class they had missed, so I
exported to RTF and emailed the notes to them, a mix of text, ink text,
shapes, and sketches. I freaked some people out when my pocket started
talking to me. ("Bingely-bingely-beep! You have a meeting scheduled for
today at eleven o'clock regarding thermodynamics.")

The biggest boggle I gave my classmates was in the 4th year design
project. A topic came up, and everybody was trying to remember how to
do that task. It was from a class last year, how did we do that
again... I pulled out my Newton, went to last year's notes, called it
up, and gave them the answer they were looking for. I got a "WTF? You
have last year's notes with you?" but it's not as if they weighed any
more!

Then after graduation I wrote a novel on it, then took notes from a
training session for my new job, then later on the battery life
declined until it was only good for an hour or so, and then I didn't
use it for a couple of years.

Then I got a battery rebuild! And I'm slowly working the Newt back into
my life. I'm mostly at a desk now for work though, and we use paper
notebooks as records of what we did. Not searchable, but easy for other
people to look through if needed. Still trying to figure out how to
best work it back in.

-Rhonda

====================================================================
The NewtonTalk Mailing List - http://www.newtontalk.net/
The Official Newton FAQ - http://www.splorp.com/newton/faq/
The Newton Glossary - http://www.splorp.com/newton/glossary/
WikiWikiNewt - http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
====================================================================
Received on Fri Aug 8 23:53:22 2008