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

I appreciate this is not an interesting Newton history but I've offered
it just to show that the platform is still attracting people:

Name: Andy Hill
Age: 39 -soon to be 40 (eek! I still don't know what I want to be when I
grow up!)
Occupation: NHS Commissioning Manager
Location: Somerset, England, UK.

I never knew anything about the Apple Newton until 2005 when a friend of
mine, who is a stone mason, showed me an MP120 that he uses every day to
keep a log of time spent on different jobs. I was amazed by the
handwriting recognition and that such 'relatively' old technology was
still useful.

After much deliberation I purchased an MP2000 (on eBay from the US) a
few weeks later. I liked it more than I thought I would and have been
using it daily ever since. I have no other PDAs or similar technology.
My main uses are:

Daily alarm clock - (generally set to the built in 'whoop' - which
sounds like frogs croaking - a gentle and humorous way to wake up)
Work and home diary and contacts.
Birthday reminders are a blessing.
Todos + reminders - again this is really key particularly for work.
I have some special photos on there as well just to glance at on the
train etc.
Notes - various waffle really.
All codes and passwords (banks, eBay, email accounts etc) - kept
securely with Geeksafe. (here's hoping nobody says it's not safe!)
A few mind maps which I've created on the PC, exported as bitmaps, then
made into Newton Books. The process helps learning rather than being
that useful once it's done.
Plus lots and lots and lots of 'farting about' i.e. loading things up,
trying them out, taking them off. Trying to get the ultimate set up but
eventually resorting back to the basic apps plus a few selected others.
Last but not least, messing around with the kids. (They are 6 and 4 yrs
- so I can get away with it for the time being). For example recording
them singing silly things like the Star Wars theme tune into Wake Up
Call and setting this as the alarm for the following day.
Or writing a silly poem and getting the newt to read it aloud via
macintalk.
I have set up Wifi and used it for email.
Sometimes I just gaze into it, tapping here, tapping there - but not
really doing much - it's sort of contemplative.

I also have an eMate, courtesy of Frank Gruendel, which I share with the
children. Sadly it is mostly used to play games, particularly Darleks.
Also we do silly drawings of each other and beam them across.

Incidentally when the kids were still getting up painfully early, I used
to set the eMate as their alarm clock and say that they could only come
out of their room after the alarm. I downloaded a load of animal sounds
onto the eMate and they got to choose which animal alarm would go off
the next day. It worked for a while, (but they still get up painfully
early).

A low point in my Newton career was as follows. During 2006, after
reading various threads from the mac enthusiasts on this list (of which
there are many), I got lured into thinking that the Mac / Newton
experience would be better than the Microsoft / newton experience.
(Despite at the time having a fairly old PC on which all the syncing and
linking with the newt worked perfectly). So I purchased a Pismo only to
realise that it didn't have a serial port and that the main Newton
programmes worked on OSs which preceded OSX. The double booting, the USB
to serial stuff and not really liking OSX got the better of me and I
returned to Microsoft. Unfortunately by then we had a more modern PC at
home with windows XP and none of the previous syncing / linking worked
as it did before.

My main wish for the Newton would be that I could get it to hook up to a
modern mobile phone (with or without cable) and dial up to check emails
whilst out and about. I tried to get this to work via bluetooth and
Blunt etc but never succeeded.

All in all it has become a definite companion and the only technology
that could possibly pull me away from using it is a filofax.

I must say that it is a much better experience thanks to the members of
this list, aka newtontalk.net

All the best
Andy

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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/
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Received on Tue Aug 19 16:08:33 2008