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Weird enough I spent 5 hours of the past 24 playing Epyx Sub Battle. It was released in 1987, my parents gave it to me for my 12th or 13th birthday. Even though I have the original game I use a crack now because 5.25" discs have gone out of fashion.

I have been wondering why it is still so playable despite its age. My answer is that it was really well made. I played other sub simulators (Hunt for Red October, 688 Attach Sub, Wolfpack,... all 90's stuff) but none had the detail, AI and suspense as Epyx's. Remarkably because they are mostly known for Summer games etc. And all that on ONE floppy...

Yes, I have.. like Leather Godess of phobos, or the first one I played, Calixto Island.
For that one, I initially played a French version of it in text only.

I guess I was referring more to the later versions of those text adventures, with basic graphics involved, Sierra style. I guess the equivalent of what I was saying refers to "Chose your own adventure books" more than this topic.

But if it were all text, with a text input and no autocompletion, there's no way anyone could navigate through it.

Wasn't much of a FPS, but I think the first walkthrough 3D game was Dungeons of Daggorath for the TRS-80 Color Computer.

Here's a link with screenshots:
http://nitros9.stg.net/daggorath.html

OK. Now, take his day-timer, and your PDA (or whatever), and throw them away.... Then do the race again. Assuming you're taking advantage of even the basic synchronization software available for most devices, it won't take you long to look up the calendar on your PC, the web, or go out and buy a replacement PDA, and resynch as soon as you get home. Either way, you're comparing lookup times, which is only a small part of the big picture. Really, how fast does it need to be? I think the question should be, was it relatively easy and painless...and yes, not too time consuming.

I for one, loved my Compaq Concerto (Pen for Windows v3.1 & Win95 UI). The pen is such a better interface than a mouse/track pad. Though I didn't ever try to write notes on it, because, at the time, handwriting regognition was terrible.

I used to play this educational game for the TRS-80 called "Atom" http://nitros9.stg.net/atom.html.

The screen showed a central nucleus, with spinning electron holes. Your job was to capture free electrons with your little ship and shoot them into the holes. You started with the first shell with 2 holes, one for H and one for He, and then the next shell of 8 appeared for you to fill, etc. etc. Eventually the screen got very cramped, which must be why they stopped at 54.

If you fired the electron and missed the hole, you'd hit the nucleus, and the whole thing would explode. Very frustrating once you had made it all the way to Germainium (I remember playing this game about the same time as the Jackson's Victory Tour, and being tickled that there was an element named Germainium, but I digress).

I say, add touch sensitivity to an existing laptop design and you have a winner. Make the lid swivel so you can close it with the display on the outside, add some handwriting recognition software and you have effectively a "tablet PC".

Yes it's nice to directly interact with a screen. Back then it seemed like a no-brainer too, so why did the Concerto die a death along with most of the other pen computing platforms? I'm not sure, maybe it just doesn't get integrated into the mainstream so it doesn't ride the price-performance curves as well as a standard laptop. If Wacom Cintiq technology were a cheap $200 upgrade on every monitor I'd spring for it on laptops and even desktops, but clearly most customers don't perceive $200 of value in being able to interact and scribble on a screen. Meanwhile for nearly everything you do on a computer a pointing device and keyboard work just fine.

I worked at GO (later EO) on PenPoint (Byte's Magazine's operating system of the year! :o), and the MS pre-emptive announcement of Windows for Pen Computing was one of several nails in that coffin. (At least PenPoint really went for it with a gestural direct interaction UI, the original and still best implementation of gestures.) It's touching to see several die-hards from those efforts banging their heads against the same wall 10 years later, at least it's at Microsoft's expense.

Then I encourage you to do so. He's having the sort of impact on the modern music scene that others could only dream about, and his influence will remain long after the Backstreet Boys and boybands have been forgotten.