I went to Microsoftıs official Tablet PC launch party here in Nashville, TN
with my co-network admin (a PC guy who Iıve taught about my Newton).
I took my Newton with me, carrying it in my hand for all to see.
I went up to a couple of manufactureıs booths to look at their model of
Tablet PC. After I finally got my hands on one, I tried and tried to figure
out how to write some text into it. It took me about 10 min. before I asked
one of the attendants how to do this. He showed me by tapping in several
different places, then a box opened up covering the bottom 3rd of the
screen. I asked the attendant if I had to type in this box, or could I just
write it into the area that I wanted the text to go. He said ³No², that I
HAD to write it in the text box, then tell it to put it where I wanted it.
I sat there looking at this new high-tech piece of equipment thinking,...
³This is nothing more than an over grown, bloated Palm Pilot!².
Donıt get me wrong, I was secretly wanting this device to be leaps and
bounds better than my Newton. [In my opinion, there has been little to no
improvement in pen based OS since the Newton. I really would like to see
other people succeed in this area, giving us better products.]
There are a lot of good ideas and technologies that they have built into
these new devices. I think that in a couple of years they might get close to
making it truly user friendly.
I told the attendant that I preferred my 5 year old method of inputting
text, and held up my Newton. He looked at it strangely and asked what it
was. I told him it was an Apple Newton MessagePad as I handed it to him.
Then I showed him how to write on it. I noticed as a couple of other people
looked over to see what it was. I told him that it had 802.11b, could send &
receive email, browse the internet and was a web server. He just said ³Wow!²
and handed it back to me.
I went and found my co-worker, who had just got his hands on one after
waiting in line. I watched from behind him as he also tried to figure out
how to use the pen to write text into a document. He had to ask an attendant
as well. His reaction was the same as mine when he saw the text input box,
and he asked ³Why canıt I put in text directly where I want it?². They told
him that they were coming out with a model that had a passive touch
sensitive screen and it might be able to do that. I was proud of him for
noticing how easy it was on my Newton, and how difficult it was on the
Tablet PC.
I was happy that I had stolen just a bit of attention away from the whole
event, and that my Newton was a part of it!
Sorry for the long post :(
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