Newton Poetry

What is the ultimate portable computer – Apple’s Newton MessagePad or Samsung’s Q1, a modern pocket-sized PC?

Thanks to the UK’s edition of CNET.com, we can finally learn the truth.

Two writers, Rory and Chris, duke it out in several key areas, like battery life and available software, to find out which is the better platform for the on-the-go Brit.

They describe their fight as, ultimately, a fight against boredom:

Having nothing better to do with our time, we’ve decided to throw them into the ring for a head-to-head comparison. In this feature we’ll take an in-depth look at their design, usability, reliability, input, output and synchronisation capabilities, and any special powers that help them stand out as the best-ever handheld.

I’m obviously biased, but the result was still a surprise to me. Based on what they found were the “knockout” features, I can’t blame the conclusion.

I won’t give away the end, but it’s a good read, and shows how – even after all these years – the Newton holds its own as a usable device for everyday tasks.

[NOTE: I forgot to add this, but I’m running OS X 10.2.8 – just in case the network stuff doesn’t look familiar.]

I love my G3 iBook. I bought it right before my Route 66 trip because (a) I was nervous about taking my then-new G4 and (b) the thing is built for road-warriors and students. It’s the toughest laptop I’ve ever seen, and I knew if I took it all the way across the country, it would survive in a pinch.

And it did, both on the Route trip and the Seattle trip. But one drawback was its lack of wireless connectivity. I underestimated the number of hotels – even run-down ones – that have wireless internet these days. One night, in Needles, California, I drove to three different hotels looking for an ethernet connection, never finding one (which is one reason why the Route updates didn’t come as often as I wanted).

Now that’s all over with. I grabbed an AirPort card off eBay for a reasonable price, and took today to actually install the thing. More… »

Got to play around with an Apple II for the first time last night, in all its green-and-black glory.

Went to Curtis’s house to see if the darned thing even ran anymore. I picked it up during one of our e-waste drives, took it home, fired it up, and got a bunch of clinking sounds.

In a former life, I swear I was an IT professional, but even after taking the CPU apart I couldn’t figure it out.

Turns out, I just had the wrong floppy disks. Curtis popped a ProDOS disk in and it fired right up.

So we played with Logo and an old Jeopardy! game, and I relived my old BASIC and DOS days: all command line, all the time. Good fun.

Part of being a Newton MessagePad fan is appreciating low-end Macs and Apples. After all, if you’re using a Newton, you’re using a low-end PDA.

I took a PowerBook 5300cs over to Curtis’s to try and find an AC adapter, too, but he didn’t have anything that provided the 24 volts needed to start the thing up. Oh well – AC adapters are pretty easy to come by.

And when I do get one, I’ll be able to install that copy of Newton Quicken I’ve been wanting to play around with.