MessagePad Maligned?

Come on, guys. Your August Lab Report ("Hand-Helds Get Serious," by Michelle Campanale) wasn't a fair, accurate article on hand-held computers, was it? Let's check the facts on the Newton MessagePad 2000 you did such a great job of maligning.

Spreadsheet? Yes, there is. Pager? A PC Card pager has been available for several years. Expense filer? Lots of freeware programs are available as extensions to its Notepad. Modem? A 28.8-Kbps PC Card modem is available. Regarding the external keyboard: Yeah, it's big, and that's good because you can actually use it (unlike those laughable CE keyboards). And how about the quick on-screen keyboard? A MessagePad 2000 is a great substitute for a heavy, slo w-booting laptop, especially on a business trip. Oh yeah, and here's another big mistake. You say the MessagePad is "proprietary." Last time I checked, Newton OS was running on platforms from a number of different manufacturers.

Paul C. Smith
Tetrainfo@aol.com

While the Newton OS might be available on hardware from manufacturers besides Apple, none of those models met the stated criteria for our review. First of all, they had to be available. Digital Ocean, for example, has announced a Newton-based smart phone and a pager product, but neither was on the market. Harris has an industrial hand-held for telecom technicians, but we focused our review on units for general-purpose users. So that the MessagePad would meet our price cap, we didn't include items that were not part of its standard configuration. Likewise, we didn't list the add-ons for any of the other hand-helds. -- Michelle Campanale