The first Zoomer's screen is not backlit. Therefore it has the same usage
characteristics as other reflective LCD products (HP 95, 100, 300, Newton,
Wizard, BOSS etc.) If you want to use it in a dark closet, bring a
flashlight. Future products may contain backlighting, however backlights
take a lot of power. We wanted the first Zoomer to get a very long battery
life.
Zoomer uses the Geos operating system. This is an object oriented
multitasking OS which isn't related to DOS. However Geos stores files in a
DOS compatible format, so I can take a memory card out of a Geos-based device
and stick it into a PC without any translation.
Zoomer software hides the file system from beginning users. For advanced
users there is a full file manager included in Zoomer. Geos allows long file
names with spaces which get mapped to 8 character names if you look at them
under DOS or Windows.
Casio hasn't released the clock speed of the Zoomer processor. It is slower
than the Newton processor and consequently gets a much longer battery life.
However, Zoomer's performance as experienced by the user is quite good
because of the software architecture.
I won't speculate on the sales impact Zoomer will have on Newton and vice
versa. The products have taken very different approaches on many issues and
they may appeal to different users. Pricing and availability have not been
announced for Newton so let's not guess.
Zoomer has an IR port that can be used for both two way data transfer and
controlling appliances (TVs, VCRs etc). You can use the IR to send files
(data, apps, anything) and to send individual items (address book entries,
note pages, etc.) You can use IR to link to a PC or MAC instead of a cable.
Getting Zoomers and Newtons to share data sounds like a good 3rd party
software opportunity to me.
There will be many different Zoomers from Casio and Tandy in the future
(nothing announced). Indeed there will also be GeoWorks-based PDAs available
from other hardware vendors. The first Zoomer is just that, the first.
One meg of RAM seems little to a PC user, it is a lot compared to an
electronic organizer. It will take many addresses, notes and appointments to
fill up Zoomer's memory. Adding more memory will use the PCMCIA slot but not
necessarily to the exclusion of other uses.
There is no way to change the ROM. However, you can easily add new software
to Zoomer, upgrade applications and patch bugs. Geos has mechanisms for
seamlessly merging files on physically different devices which handles these
cases.
Geos currently runs on any x86 class processor. Although nothing is
announced, you can be certain that future Zoomers and other Geos-based
devices will offer both higher performance and lower performance options.
The very first Zoomers sold by Tandy and Casio will be identical except for
name. Don't expect that to last forever. As for identical pricing, always
shop around.
BarnettR asked about PowerInk. PowerInk lets you do with ink almost anything
you can do with text. For example, you can create a calendar entry in ink.
You can then make this entry a repeating event, put an alarm on it, or move
it to another day. The way you do these operations is exactly the same for
both text and ink entries. You can even create an address book entry and on
a field by field basis use text or ink (including the name field).
Ink is fast, fun and expressive. PowerInk makes ink fully actionable.
Ink is edited similarly to text. Instead of erasing unwanted ink with an
erasing tool, you can back space over it a line at a time. We call this
BackspaceInk and it is pretty cool when you see it.
I hope this helps.