I have been working closely with Zoomer as a developer at AST/GRiD. As
for GEOS, its speed is adequate.
With the low screen resolution, and the slow response time of the LCD
display, faster graphics are not needed.
As for developement, Zoomer can run PenRight! applications as well as
GEOS applications. As far as I can tell, Zoomer does not compress the
data on the disk. As for battery life, Zoomer is achieving 40 hours of
constant use without changing batteries. How does Newton do?
As for performance, I havn't benchmarked Zoomer much (but I will say
that it runs my database test *much* faster than my 386SL machine). The
Zoomer processor runs at about 7MHz, and is compatible with an 80186.
Zoomers handwriting recognition seems to be pretty good. The algorithm
used is the same one used in PenRight!. Zoomer cannot recognize
cursive, but the printed character recognition appears pretty good.
The OS is definitely multi-threaded and fairly snappy, given the
hardware its running on. With a display resolution of 256x320, a faster
processor won't make that big a difference on graphics speed. Animation
on the LCD display is totally out of the question. Any fast animation
is blurred and difficult to see due to the slow response time of the LCD
display.
Zoomer appears to be designed for the traveling executive, with lots of
useful travel type programs, such as a translator which will convert a
word between 26 different languages.
I am not active with the GEOS developement, only the PenRight! support.
PenRight!, for those not aware of it, is a developement environment and
API for writing pen applications. PenRight! was developed by GRiD and
has been licensed to many third party pen developers (I have seen adds
for the developement package in magazines such as Dr. Dobb's Journal).
PenRight is fairly fast and runs on top of DOS. It is not much of a
resource hog, and is easy to use for writing software. It has Database
and communications support built in, as well as handwriting recognition.
Also, Zoomer software can be easily developed on any IBM type PC with a
VGA card, mouse, and either Borland C or Microsoft C.
Laying out forms and generating software can be as simple as drawing
arrows from one form to another form, and letting the code generator
write most of the code.
I cannot comment on the Apple Newton, since I have not seen one up
close, so I cannot make any comparisons at this time.
-Aaron WilliamsSubj: Byte Says...