09.26.99
Newtvana
Sep 26 Sun (10 AM)
Last Friday a co-worker of mine *gave* me his Newton MessagePad 2000. (!!!!) I was rather surprised, and very elated. 🙂 I’ve been an Apple fan for a decade now, and had always lusted after the Newton, but could never justify the cost, even of a used model. Well Gary had been using his MP2k for a couple of years, but his use of it had wittled down to check his mail while at his cabin. Then over the summer he got an iMac and found it was easy enough for him to grab the iMac itself and throw it in his backseat when heading out that he didn’t take the MP2k with him at all.
He had told me about looking into selling it and I was surely tempted, but had to decline as I was still building Amy and mine’s money situation up to something sustainable, and clearing out some old debts, and saving to move.
Anyway, Gary never really found a great place to sell it, (a couple of places never returned his e-mails) so he gave it to me. He said “I wanted it to go somewhere that I knew it would be really useful.”
Gary is now known as Cool Gary. 🙂
So, this weekend I’ve been cruising the web sites, found this list, read the FAQ at This Old Newton, and familiarizing myself with the Setups, Preferences, and HWR and editing techniques. Damn if the thing isn’t already 95% accurate or so. (Still having problems with “v” and “r” though.)
He gave me all of his accessesories including the 10MB Flash card, the MegaHertz CruiseCard 28.8 Modem, a Newton keyboard, and a nice leather cell phone/MP carrying case. I still haven’t really tried to sync the Newton to my Mac, but that will come in time.
Anyway, with any luck I hope that this mailing list I’ve subscribed to is similar to the Tandy Model 100 list that I’m on. A full decade after the last of that family of portables rolled off the assembly line, there’s an active, responsive group of people who share their knowledge and time, graciously and generously.