[NTLK] To keep or not

[Goodwin, Greg P.]

From: Mike Rodgers
"I cannot communicate between my current PC and the Newton, no serial 
port and it's too fast for the Newton.  I am working on rebuilding a 
Pentium II 400Mhz PC with Windows 98.  I also believe that I have a copy 
of MS Office 97 around somewhere.  It should be slow enough for the 
MessagePad.  Maybe then I can exchange files with QuickFigure Pro."

No USB to serial solution on the Pc side of the house?

On my Mac OSX machine I have a USB to the older Mac serial adaptor and that has worked just wonderful.

"As for games, I have Lunar Lander, Mahjongg, YAZI for Zork, Leather 
Goddesses and more, as well as SubHunt, Birds with Lances (Joust). "

YAZI was great.  To a Atari user like me that collects the Infocom games, it was such a thrill to have the Infocom games working on that.  I had almost all the recent Infocom compilations and those files could be ported.  That was awesome.

Subhunt was actually good.  The tapping interface did not do the Joust game justice (and while "Rocks in Space" was quite good, same problem, tapping just does not cut it.)

What has kept me interested in my Newton was Solo Deluxe.  Great card game.

"I don't read many books since I cannot transfer them to the Newton.  The 
ones I have are old public domain ones like Tarzan."

THAT'S RIGHT, Edgar Rice Burroughs works ARE on Newton book form.  I've been wanting to read the John Carter Warlord of Mars series.  Thanks for the reminder.  I think I just found a reason to carry my Newton again.


"I have a USR Xjack modem (33.6) but dialup is not what it used to be.  
It's bad enough on my PC. (No DSL in this area)."

So what kind of calling plan do you have?  There are like 30 BBS's that can be dialed in the US and Canada.   The 33.6 modem could easily be used for that. 

Even with DSL the Newton doesn't have browsing worth talking about.  You are better off using it for E-mail, newsgroups, but as for full browsing, nah!

I'm like you, when the Newton proved to be a below average Mp3 player, the ATA cards (which took HOURS to load) lost my information for the third time, and web browsers that were just sub parr I actually found the Zaurus 5600 to be a very useful device for music listening, etc.  (that was actually started running Einstein, the Newton emulator, on the Zaurus, or at least the attempt to.)  :)

The Newton is still good at note taking, book reading, and voice recording.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which is basically what it was made for really.  All the rest is just fun additives I found.

    .    .
    )\___/     Doc Clu  (member of...)
   /(- _O)       Prison Board BBS
  ( \____  )   rdfig.net  972-329-0781