[NTLK] Palm vs. Newton

Dennis Swaney romad at nvwisp.com
Mon Feb 17 17:54:29 EST 2020


Of course the Palm Pilot was first released just as Jobs was taking a
hatchet to the Newton. I was waiting for the follow-on to the MP2100 when
it was axed, so I then bought an original Palm Pilot instead.

Sincerely,
Dennis B. Swaney

"Cogito Ergo Mac"


On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 2:41 PM NewtonTalk <newtontalk at pda-soft.de> wrote:

> > Frank, well thought out as always.
>
> Thanks (blush)...
>
> > the Newton really fail us because of its poor synchronization qualities,
> > or are these things we now take for granted, so the disappointment is in
> hindsight?
>
> Apart from never having had the impression that any of my Newtons failed
> me:
> The reasons for buying my various Palm Pilots were all quite simple.
>
> a) It was affordable, and you could get it everywhere. As opposed to
> Newtons. If I hadn't been given an OMP at an Apple developer conference a
> long time ago, I might still be unaware today of what a Newton is. Apple
> had
> next to no advertising at that time, and even if you went into an Apple
> store with heaps of cash in your pocket, which I did when I intended to buy
> Apple's first color laptop, you were unlikely to bring home what you set
> out
> for because, although it had been announced weeks before, it wasn't
> available. At least not in Germany. I tried all stores in Hamburg, which
> isn't exactly a village. All I could have bought that day was the black and
> white version of this brand spanking new model, complete with a nasty flaw
> in the display. This was the only real piece of hardware I found in all
> Hamburg.
>
> b) Synchronization was easy, and it came out of the box unless you wanted
> to
> synchronize with Outlook.
>
> c) I didn't have to mess around with cables. My Palms always came with a
> docking station that was solid and reliable. Plugging the Palm in and
> pressing the sync button took less than five seconds.
>
> d) Palms were small. They fit in my trouser pocked, which even the OMP did
> not. I never was a fan of cargo pants, and I never carry anything in a
> separate bag because I would forget it somewhere within a week. So for me
> Newtons are machines for home use.
>
> d) Palms did most of what they were designed for exceedingly well. I was a
> big fan of the Fitaly keyboard. Entering text that way was reliable and
> fast. Way faster than the OMP's on-screen keyboard.
> However, I hardly ever wrote prose on my Palm machines. The screen was
> simply too small, and if you wanted to edit things after writing, the
> Newton
> beat any Palm hands down.
>
> > In those days I really disliked the Palm, mostly I think because it did
> and had things
> > other PDAs?like the Newton and Zaurus I owned?did not. Full color, great
> GUI. I guess I was jealous.
>
> I guess that's the wrong strategy. Life is easier if you try to use the
> gadget that can do a particular job best. These days, I wouldn't even think
> of writing more than a handful of paragraphs on a Newton. I wouldn't even
> use an eMate although it has a decent keyboard, making me ten times faster
> than on a Newton. Speech recognition on my latest Android phone is so
> incredibly good that I would never use the (stupid) Android keyboard.
>
> The funny thing is that I've never missed a color screen. Neither on my
> Palms nor on my Newtons. The last two or three generations of Palms I owned
> actually had color screens, and I didn't see any real benefit. I mostly
> used
> this device for managing contacts and to dos, and this worked just as well
> in black & white. Even better in my opinion, since the battery lasted much
> longer.
>
> Cheers
>
> Frank
>
> -- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de
>
>
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