General

Today I got my Apple Newton MessagePad 120 via snail mail. Regarding the size, it's about 10x20 cm big, so it is indeed big compared to today's PDAs. So far, all I was playing with was the handwriting recognition, and boy, it sucks planets through straws. You need to write every word letter by letter, and wait in between it recognized the letter, then it works pretty OK, but as soon as you write faster and not as proper as before, handwriting recognition produces nothing but bullshit.



The other applications on the Newton are pretty much standard, the usual stuff like notes, contacts, calendars, etc. Unfortunately, no games. But still impressive for that time (the Newton that I own is over 9 years old). It even features a PCMCIA slot, and a 2 MB "flash storage card" and a fax modem card (9600 bps were with the Newton. It also came with some spreadsheet applications, but I didn't have time yet to try that out.