While I am impressed with the Newton several things about it need
improvement. It is a great technology, but Zoomer appears to offer a great
deal of functionality as a "palmtop" tool.
The one Zoomer feature that appeals to me the most is PowerInk. One
shortcoming of my Psion S3 is taking notes during meetings- the keyboard
makes it impractical. A PDA is ideal for scribbling notes, but if you use
handwriting recognition, it may be distracting to see the number of errors
in your writing. And if you use ink, and can't later translate to text for
inclusion in PC-based documents, what good is it (just have to type your
notes over, I guess!). PowerInk seems to solve that problem. Can Zoomer
translate ink to text and then run the spell checker on the new text?
There seems to be a lot of conversation about Zoomer power use vs. Newton. I
know from experience that my Psion does close to 100 hours. I change the two
AA batteries about once every four months. I don't see why Zoomer can't
match that. The thought of changing batteries every three days (as in
Newton) is inconceivable for a palmtop. That's the kind of thing I'd expect
in a laptop.
Some other questions for Casio:
How come the Zoomer OS and Apps don't run from ROM (like the HP Omnibook) and
save that precious RAM?
In the Zoomer NotePad, are text and graphics interchangeable or do you have
to toggle to a new mode for graphics? Does it have drawing tools? Are
graphics objects or bit maps?
Does Zoomer "clean up" the graphics like the Newton or leave them as drawn?
Does Zoomer still have a cover over the screen?
Will there be future upgrades available (like the Sharp 9600 II) when
improvements to the original Zoomer come out? Apple, for example, has
traditionally offered upgrade paths to Mac products and is expected to do so
for Newton.
Will Zoomer connect to a MAC? If I can't connect to my MacIntosh I can't
justify buying Zoomer............
I guess that's enough for now. Thanks in advance for any comments!
Regards,
Bob B.