It would be fair to compare this to other organizers, even the most high-end electronic organizer.
As for handwriting recognition... Personally I don't like having to learn alternate characters either, but using Graffitti allows them to get fast, accurate recognition on a device with a slow processor. The Newton runs on a RISC processor and gets about 9-10 hours battery life, the OmniGo gets a couple weeks battery life. Incidentally, Graffitti is available for Newton, and I beleive I heard somewhere that it's also in ROM in NewtonOS 2.0... The Zoomer had traditional HWR, and it was not worth using. It was slow, inaccurate, and combined with the lack of a keyboard, made the Zoomer almost unusable (to me at least...).
I agree with the comments about the screen though... HP should have put more thought into it...
-L