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

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 5:09 PM, Matt Howe <matthowe@comcast.net> wrote:
> Hurry up and get your responses in.
>

Man, just put the pressure on us!

Here's mine--long and boring, but...

NAME: Jon Glass
AGE: Old enough to know better: 43
OCCUPATION: Preacher/missionary
LOCATION: Krakow, Poland
NEWTON COLLECTION: Complete? 2100 (mine) Old Sharp running NOS 1.1,
MP120 or two (children's), MP130 (son's) MP200 (daughter's)

MY NEWTON STORY:

As a faith-supported missionary, I had to raise our own support. This
meant both contacting churches, corresponding and traveling to said
churches. I did it for a couple years, using a DayTimer and index
cards, but in 1993, heard about the Newton, and suspected it could
meet my needs, but reading about the 1.0 NOS, concluded that it was
not sufficient. When NOS 2 came out, did more investigations, and
realized it could replace my DOS laptop. I started reading the Newton
forums on AOL, and eventually found an OS 1.3 MP120. My goal was to
upgrade it to 2.0. Unfortunately, my plans were thwarted by finances,
but one night, I tripped on our porch over my son's baseball bat, and
shattered the screen. Excuse! (and, for some reason, it was much
cheaper with the repair). Shortly after buying my first Newton, I
discovered NTLK thanks to the then _very_ active AOL forum. BTW, back
in the day, the AOL forum was the place to be! There were live chats
with Newton team members and developers, and a deep library of
software which only UNNA touches, and then, only in recent years. Well
I discovered NTLK back then, while Sean was the list dad. :-)

What I used my Newton for. Well, while traveling--everything. I could
travel months on end without my computer. I used it and Action Names
for keep in top of my schedule and phone calls. Used Aloha to do our
AOL email (my wife and I both used my Newton for email--she used
Mosaic for HWR) BTW, NTLK was just as active back then, and Aloha did
a great job of keeping on top of it. I also used the Newton for
tracking traveling and business expenses, using PocketMoney. Lastly, I
used my Newton for writing and printing letters and envelopes. When I
arrived in Poland, the Newton was less useful, but still, retained its
use for finances and note-taking among others. It also became
essential at first for all sorts of conversions. :-)

However, since 2006, I've been using a Palm for the simple reason that
it has decent Bible software (I carry over 100 megabytes of
commentaries and Bibles on my Palm!) and amazing multi-lingual
dictionaries--and now, my Palm is a phone. :-) However, my Newton sits
on my desk, and is used for note-taking whenever I need to, and still,
it's my calculator, currency exchange calculator, and alarm clock,
etc. Granted, I could use my Palm for these, (except
note-taking--Graffiti and the keyboard don't hold a candle to the
Newton's HWR), but I prefer the ease of use of the Newton's OS, and
how the tools work. Also, I want to keep my Newton active. Nothing
wrong with an active retirement, is there? Oh, and the other day, we
were looking at planets, and didn't know which were which. My Palm was
useless for this, but my Newton stepped up to the task and performed
admirably.

-- 
 -Jon Glass
Krakow, Poland
<jonglass@usa.net>
"I don't believe in philosophies. I believe in fundamentals." --Jack Nicklaus
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