Cheap Linux Tablets, And (Maybe) An Apple Tablet

penguinrenegade writes "Element Computer has come out with the first sub-$1000 Tablet, and it doesn't come with Windows. It's not running a stripped OS like Windows CE, but a full-fledged copy of Lycoris Desktop/LX. This company seems to really have it in for Microsoft, with a 'No Windows' policy. Good to see someone finally standing up against paying the Microsoft tax. Maybe now we'll start seeing Linux only OEMs and resellers." Also on the tablet computer front, SeanAhern points out Cringely's latest Robert X. Cringely column, in which Cringley makes the case that Apple is readying a tablet computer for market, and "suggests that 'until next year, the parts won't have been there to make tablet PCs successful. What's missing has been the killer app, and what kept a killer app from appearing was a lack of hardware support, which I believe will be over soon,'" writing "He's got some interesting ideas about where Jobs might go with his Digital Hub idea." (This is an Antaur-based machine, not the Toshiba tablet mentioned in October.)

Comments

Built in TV tuner!

[i_am_syco]

Apple's bound to make a tablet eventually. If the market demands it, it'll definitely happen, and the current tablets on the market suck. Apple's got the Newton tech for handwriting recog, as well as Inkwell, the most underused feature in OS X...now, all you have to add is a touch sensitive screen and BINGO.

Re:Built in TV tuner!

[mblase]

Apple's bound to make a tablet eventually. If the market demands it, it'll definitely happen, and the current tablets on the market suck.

You say that as if those two sentences had anything in common. IIRC, there was virtually no real demand for the iPod when it was introduced (a 5GB digital music player? and $300 to boot??), but it was so whiz-bang and easy to use that it literally created its own market. For what it's worth, the original Apple greenscreen PCs did pretty much the same thing. (The main reason the Newton failed is because it wasn't as easy to use as it needed to be; it fell to Palm to reach that goal.)

Right now, there's no demand from the market for tablet PCs whatsoever. The demand is from Microsoft, and from those hardware companies they've sold on the idea. But if/when Apple introduces one, it will need to be the most intuitive, uncomplicated, and convenient thing that anyone has ever made. Anything less, especially with Apple's market share, will be a flop and Jobs knows it.

Interesting...

[Atragon]

Depending on the software availability angle, this could be a major breakthrough for Linux, being the primary OS for a vendor.

Fastest Slashdotting ever?

[Radi-0-head]

Man that was fast... and this error makes me wonder:

1226 - User 'elementc_ms2' has exceeded the 'max_questions' resource (current value: 10000)

Does that mean there are in excess of 10,000 people trying to hit this site at once? Wow.

Robert X. Cringely

[minus_273]

If i remember correctly, Robert X. Cringely was the same guy who wrote that Win XP ran DOS underneath becasue "cmd" works and that windows should be based on linux instead because linux is better than DOS.
For all the stupid things i have seen on /. , what i dont understand is why this guy is so important?

Re:Robert X. Cringely

[Teflik]

The way I see it, Cringely is a very good historian. He's good at sifting throught the facts of what has already happened, and putting things together accurately.

As far I I'm concerned, he's a totally worthless and annoying analyst. He rarely knows what the hell he's talking about.

I don't know what slashdot sees in him either most of the time.

Re:Robert X. Cringely

[Fnkmaster]

I have to stand up for Cringely somewhat on this one. The cmd comment is dumb, admittedly, and from an economic and business standpoint, clearly MS would never want to do something like this. Nonetheless, the Win32 API could be ported to run on top of Linux/X. What exactly do you think WINE is, if not 80% of such a beast. And if Microsoft made it themselves, it would actually work well, rather than just working sometimes like WINE.

Another way of looking at it is that he's saying that somebody could create a lot of value on top of the existing Linux platform by making a decent GUI/Windowing System, the same way that Apple did with OS X, and still have a viable commercial product out of it, one which would be better than Windows in many ways, which I agree with as well. Again, clearly makes no sense from a business perspective, but the idea isn't as totally without merit as you make it seem.

Re:Robert X. Cringely

[Teflik]

He can throw together a summary of what he's read elsewhere,

Yeah. kinda like a historian.

add in some predictions

kinda like an analyst...

Re:Robert X. Cringely

[FueledByRamen]

SGI's FSN - 3d Filesystem Navigator. For IRIX 4.0.1 - 5.3 only. Have fun!

An open-source clone, fsv, is also available on SourceForge.

Apple != Tablet

[OmniVector]

According to Steve Jobs himself I don't think we can expect to see a tablet from apple at all. It's a niche product in a niche computer field.

Re:Apple != Tablet

[evn]

Except that onemorething.com is a parody site and not actually steve jobs' web-log.

There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cell phone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.

This is from the horse's mouth, a transcript of an interview between Steve Jobs and Walt Mossberg at "all things digital". (sorry I couldn't find the article on a "good" source (ie: google news) so go easy on it.

Re:Apple != Tablet

[sysopd]

then how do you explain this pic I have of the new prototype?

Linux in the marketplace

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe now we'll start seeing Linux only OEMs and resellers."

That was never a problem in the first place. It is that Microsoft has threatened to revoke the ability of retailers to carry computers with Windows alongside with other OSes (i.e. stop selling Linux, or you can't sell Windows). Most retailers balked, since most of their business is Windows, they'd rather not have to worry about losing a large portion of their customers for the sake of those that want Linux.

worrys about tablets

[CaptBubba]

I can't get to the site, but he's my ramble: I think the tablets are an interesting take on the notebook/laptop (whichever you call it). As a student, I feel that if they ever came down in price they could be very useful for taking notes on. A laptop works decently for some classes where the majority of the notes are non-symbolic, but trying to take notes in a math or physics class is simply impossible, with the subscipts and sketches.

But, how do you protect that screen? Something big like that just seems to be a huge scratch and scuff collector. Is this the case or am I just missing something obvious again?

Re:worrys about tablets

[vruba]

Paper and pen(cil) are very good for taking sketch-like notes. If you'd just convert raster sketch-notes taken on a tablet to MathML (e.g.) anyway, you might as well do the same thing working from paper. In other words, there's no extra convenience in recording notes digitally if you're going to do a computationally difficult/impossible transform on them before it matters whether they're digital.

I think any tablet would have to have an extremely good equation-recognition system before most people would find it useful for taking notes. Even then it would be competing with pen and paper for speed and flexibility of interface. I wouldn't consider paying for something that just gave me what I'd get if I scanned my analog notes.

Tablets might be a good idea someday, but I don't think even Apple can do it with (what little I know of) current natural-graphics-recognition technology. Wake me up when they're twice as good as pen and paper and cost less than three times as much.

Re:worrys about tablets

[Osty]

But, how do you protect that screen? Something big like that just seems to be a huge scratch and scuff collector. Is this the case or am I just missing something obvious again?

The best tablets have a rotating screen. At first glance, they look just like a slim laptop, complete with keyboard. Unlock the screen, rotate it 180deg, and shut the clamshell, and now you have a tablet. There's nothing you can do about protecting the screen while you're using it, but when transporting and storing it you'd have it in the laptop configuration (screen facing the keyboard while closed).

Not all tablets are built this way, but the good ones (read: expensive ones) are.

Re:worrys about tablets

[EverDense]

A laptop works decently for some classes where the majority of the notes are non-symbolic, but trying to take notes in a math or physics class is simply impossible, with the subscipts and sketches.

Yes, but a small hi-res camera attached to your notebook/tablet PC,
and you don't even have to bother sketching.

Should have happened years ago.

[ActionPlant]

"Maybe now we'll start seeing Linux only OEMs and resellers."

Wishful thinking, and I'm wishing it too. The problem is a base. Tablet PCs haven't been doing so hot (at least not in my neighborhood). The only major interest that I've seen on a large scale has been that of FedEx looking to implement them with their current DADS system, in addition to maintaining open communications with cellular towers. I'm a FedEx dispatcher myself, so I'm kept abreast of what technologies we're planning on moving to in the future. Tablet PCs in the field will help keep us even more accurately up-to-date. Currently, our drivers can only transmit when in range of our larger towers (which are only in the cities), meaning that customers wanting updated tracking information on a package routed to a rural area just have to sit and wait until the driver is in range to transmit data confirming that he/she has indeed delivered that package. With properly equipped tablets, we're hoping to eliminate this problem with true real-time status updates.

What's curious is that, though I may have my head in the clouds, I've really not heard of any other major market for these things beyond novelty. The exception being the Apple rumor. Had apple had access to the technology in a financially feasable market (say 1994) I can absolutely see how ClarisWorks 4 could have dominated the word processing market of that day, and we'd have tablet PCs everywhere. As it stands now, I get the impression that people aren't quite sure what to do with these crazy things.

Damon,

Praise be.........To Google Cache

[OctaneZ]

Front Page
It's not much, but at least provides a "look" at one of their products.
-OZ

typo alert!

[knowles420]

this:

OS like Windows CE

should read:

OS-like Windows CE

Not quite there yet

[product byproduct]

Tablet computers hold great promise, especially for medical applications. But the current models are still way too large to swallow.

Inkwell == Rosetta

[soft_guy]

Inkwell is the Newton's handwriting recognition engine ported to OS X.

For certain uses, tablets are great. I loved the Newton - it was a great computing solution for people who have to stand up. (Like walking around doing inventory control, or doing data entry while inspecting a highway, doctors, etc.)

If Apple could also market it so that it competes with something like the Wacom Cintiq tablets, but also could have a keyboard plugged in and be like a full blown Mac, I could see it filling a niche.

Re:Inkwell == Rosetta

[i_am_syco]

There have most likely been refinements to the engine. I mean, Newton was far from perfect in terms of handwriting recognition. It was great, but like everything, it wasn't perfect. Apple could've easily pumped a hundred thousand dollars into it and make it kick ass. Not to mention that if they DO come out with a tablet, it's going to have the hand recog improved as much as possible.

What's the use? / Creating a Market

[Azghoul]

This is going to seem like your average flaming /. question (hmm, that didn't quite come out right), but I'm genuinely curious as to the problem that the tablet PC solves. What's it good for?

I honestly don't see the use in it, and instead I really see another try by engines of industry to create demand for a product noone really needs...

Hopefully someone can explain it to me, and this isn't just me turning 30...

Re:What's the use? / Creating a Market

[Galvatron]

I'm not sure anyone NEEDS a tablet any more than anyone NEEDS a laptop, or PDA, or whatever. However, as the owner of a TabletPC, here are some of the reasons I like my tablet:

• Taking notes. I am a student, and I find the tablet PC excellent for taking notes. I have the advantage of digital note taking (easy to manipulate, easy to store, easy to organize) with the advantages of paper notes (drawing diagrams, complex mathematical symbols easy to write). Moreover, MS's new OneNote application automatically records the lecture to .wma, which I can replay on my mp3 player while I run (I suppose one could do the same thing with any other audio recorder, but OneNote is also the best note taking application, so it's nice that the recording feature is built in).
• Drawing. There are obvious drawbacks to drawing on the computer as opposed to pencil & paper, but there are a hell of a lot of advantages too. Undo buttons and layers are the most obvious. Unlike tablets that have to be connected to your computer, tablet PCs are mobile, allowing one to draw anywhere. What I'm really looking forward to are tablet PCs with transflective screens, so they'll be usable outside.
• Removes need for a PDA. My tablet is only 3 lbs, so while it is clearly bulkier and heavier than a Palm, it is easy enough to bring with me whenever I expect to need my schedule (I'm looking for a nice leather portfolio for it at the moment, that would make things even better). Unlike a PDA (or at least, unlike my old Palm III), it doesn't have to convert everything to text. So if you want to jot down a quick note, rather than painstakingly entering one letter at a time and correcting mistakes, you just use regular handwriting. So long as you can read your own handwriting, there's no need to ever convert it to text (though the recognition for cursive is pretty damn good, so long as you're writing dictionary words).
• Reading. I know someone above pooh-poohed the notion of using it as an e-book reader, but there's no doubt it's useful for that function. The fact that the display can be rotated is a tremendous benefit. It's just so much easier to read on a tall, narrow display than a wide, short display (this is why newspapers have columns). I'm not just talking about e-books either. Even reading websites offline is easier (surfing can be laborious, given slowness of text entry with the pen).

A tablet is probably a poor primary computer (one can use docking stations I suppose, but mine is only a 1 Ghz Centrino, not exactly blazing). I think that for students and artists, it's probably a better secondary computer than a laptop. For business folk who do lots of typing on the road, probably not so much (on the other hand, business folk who mainly review documents, check email, and take notes at conferences might be well served by a tablet).

Parts just do not add up

[SuperKendall]

The article talks about the "killer app" for the tablet being home theater (basically). Then it goes to add that the hardware to make that possible - UWB wireless - is just coming out in January.

To me though none of these pieces add up. I can possibly see HD video feeds between components and even PC's being of some use - but to a tablet? HD resolution is going to be wasted on a tablet screen (at least at current DPI for LCD's).

Then once the video gets to the table - what then? A really large glorified remote control? Why would Apple have any interest in that?

In the article he even mentioned the quote from Jobs that I agree with 100% - computers need keyboards. I have zero desire to see a tablet from Apple, partly because I feel it would be a drain on them but also partly because I just can't see how such a device fits into anyones world other than sketch artists. I beta tested some kind of tablet PC long ago, and the device worked OK - but I was hard pressed to find good reasons to own one, and now I have a laptop which I find much handier.

Would an Apple tablet be cool? Possibly, but not in the same way the iPod or OSX is cool...

Re:Now this is just personal opinion

[Rick the Red]

a Mac tablet would be refining a current idea that few people want.

Not really. Lots of people want tablet PCs, they just don't want the ones that have been released so far. What most people want is what Apple would most likely deliver - thin, light, easy to use, with built-in networking. Basically, a very large PDA with the power of a laptop.

So far most tablet PCs have included a keyboard, which is nuts if you've ever used a Pocket PC's handwriting recognition -- the technology is there, just give it to us in a larger form factor (with a 2 GHz processor, 512Meg Ram, a hard drive, and a real OS, not Windows CE). They're also way too expensive, a feature I'm afraid Apple would likely copy.

News.com report

[mrklin]

"A small PC maker and a Linux distributor have teamed up to offer a tablet-style PC for $999, hundreds of dollars less than similar devices running Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC Edition software.

The Helium 2100, from Staten Island, N.Y.-based manufacturer Element Computer, is a convertible PC with a sliding screen that can be positioned for use as a traditional notebook PC or folded down for use as a touch-screen tablet device. "

Source: http://news.com.com/2100-1005_3-5112309.html?tag=n efd_top

Re:Just a large palm pilot

[gl4ss]

well it's circular thinking..

**What's missing has been the killer app, and what kept a killer app from appearing was a lack of hardware support, which I believe will be over soon**

killer app hasn't come because there hasn't been hardware deployed widely(i take 'hardware support' as this, lack of market), but wouldn't a killer app be the thing that would enable that hardware to sell.. so that there would be enough of them deployed for somebody to make that killer app..

well personally i'd have the 'killer app' for myself, but that would need it to be water proof.

what's that you ask, what would be my killer app? reading while in bath(or while showering, but that would waste water and that would be bad karma right? or maybe while in a rain). really, the places where you couldn't use a laptop are pretty much the places where you can't have the fragility(and being afraid of water) of a laptop. if it was STURDY, and liquidproof there would be lots of uses for it.

well, of course if you were of disgusting mind(such as myself) you could imagine using it for pron while at there..

some whois info

[olddoc]

whois elementcomputer.com:
"Domain name: ELEMENTCOMPUTER.COM
Administrative Contact:
Hjorleifsson, Mike mikeh@dtev.com"
OK, lets look here:
http://www.dtev.com
They are a bunch of Linux consultants.

Dtev.com Isn't slashdotted yet!

specs from web site

[Anonymous Coward]

Helium 2100
$999

Preconfigured Linux Tablet with Lycoris Desktop/LX

Key features

14.1-inch XGA (1024 x 768) Touch Panel active matrix display
Perfect 2-in-1 convertible design, Notebook and Tablet PC
Processor: 1 GHz VIA? Antaur
Stylus included
256MB Installed Memory: up to 1 GB of DDR266 200-pin DRAM via two sockets
30GB Installed Hard Drive: up to 80 GB
Keyboard: 85-key keyboard with Extended Function Keys
O/S: Powered by Desktop/LX Tablet Edition
Battery: up to 3 hours battery life
Wireless: internal 802.11b (11 MBps) (OPTIONAL)
Ports:
2x USB 1.1/2.0;
1x type II PCMCIA/CardBus slot;
1x IrDA 1.1 FiR;
1x stereo headphone jack;
1x RJ11 for K56flex V90 modem;
1x RJ45 for 10/100 LAN;
1x external CRT port;
4-in-1 Flash Card Reader SD/MMC/MS/SM

Re:Questions about Lycoris

[Down8]

They have a downloadable version. Source is available upon request, for a nominal shipping fee. Yes, this decision pissed off a lot of the Lycoris community. It is not dissimilar ot SuSE and Mandrake's policies of putting up their previous release for download, while limiting their current release to a "Live" status.

-bZj

Mac Tablet PC?

[NtroP]

You know, I can't remember how many times I've been away from my computer (in my house or at work) and wanted to just "pop in" and do a quick check on a running process, check for the latest /. story, browse CNNs page, check the TV or Movie guide for my area, read my email or some other, predominantly point-and-click, activity.

I think most manufacturers are having problems with table PCs because they are trying to make them keyboardless laptops. It will never happen. Why? I hate to write. So do many others and true handwriting technology is so processor intensive you can't currently pack it into a handheld. I'd rather type. I can type much faster that I can write and, well, you see where I'm going with this.

If I were going to deliver a "tablet" PC, I'd make one like this:

• Thin, light, solid state - no moving parts and pretty much sealed.
• Built-in wireless (802.11g?) and a (maybe some sort of universal) card-reader slot for SD cards, microdrives, memory sticks, etc.
• Low power processor and graphics cards - c'mon kids, we aren't playing Doom on this thing.
• An inductive charger or some sort of "usefull" (as in - it's a slideshow pictureframe while idle/recharging) charging cradle

Basically, it would simply be a touch-sensitive dumb terminal for a "central server" or master machine on my desk or in my closet. I'd want to be able to "VNC" to my desktop or open one of several "published" X-window apps with a finger tap. Give me a browser, email client (could be a browser), basic word processing (all running off my central server) and perhaps a small collection of rdp and terminal service clients - perhaps also running off my desktop. With a simple GUI to configure a connection to one (or more?) parent hosts and little or no built-in brains, this could be made dirt cheap (all the processing is handled by the server) - you are paying mostly for the touchscreen - which doesn't have to be very big. I'd pay a couple hundred bucks a piece or so to have one sitting on my coffee table or in my bedroom.

Remember, this isn't supposed to be a PC in it's own right. It's supposed to be an extension of my main PC. 90% of what I want to do with a "tablet" is monitor something or do a quick browse without having to run into the other room. If you try to make it be a computer in-and-of-itself, it will be prohibitively expensive, heavy, hot and large.

If I could take my Palm(tm), add low-power, built-in wireless networking, stretch the screen to about 10"x6" and add an Xwindows/VNC client, I'd be getting pretty close to having what I, personally, want in a tablet.

Just my opinion, but this comes from many time when I've caught myself wishing I could just have my monitor follow me from room to room.

Re:Now this is just personal opinion

[silentbozo]

What I want is a cheap pad that I can read eBooks on. Websurfing, word processing, drawing, etc. are nice add-ons, but the killer app is being able to have a couple of these slates lying around, with a very long battery life, able to hook into the household wifi network, and deliver any of the ebooks in my library at a moment's notice.

Right now, the market is oriented toward overpriced, notebook replacement devices, with hi-res screens, bright backlighting, extra bulk for the fold-under keyboard, and *shudder* Windows as the OS. I recently got a Sony Clie NX60 off of eBay. It works ok for what I want (need to buy a wifi adapter card though), but ideally it would have a 640x480 screen, the size of a writing tablet (roughly 6"x8".) I would have gotten one of those RCA REB1200 ebooks, but the proprietary OS and lack of programs/wireless was a big downer

Obligatory Simpsons Ref (Was: Inkwell == Rosetta)

[IncredibleCrisis]

Nelson: Jimbo, take a memo on your Newton, beat up Martin.
Jimbo: [Writes "Beat up Martin"; Newton "recognizes."] "Eat up Martha"? Bah! [Throws at Martin's head.]

Re:Now this is just personal opinion

[homer_ca]

should be a very expensive electronic legal pad/sketchbook based on a modded version of WinCE & sub-par processors. Every time I see the specs for a tablet PC, my heart sinks, for if it only had a decent processor and decent memory

I wouldn't exactly say that. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition IS full fledged Windows XP. Sure, the PIII-M in most tablets are a step behind the Pentium-M, but otherwise the hardware specs are comparable to an ultraportable (3lb range) laptop, which barely a year ago still used PIII-M's.

choice

[mixmasta]

I don't want a linux-only-oem. I just want one to give me a choice...

windows, linux, or blank hard disk.

In other news...

[PCM2]

According to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer:

"There are no plans to stop pushing tablets. When Microsoft first started out, people didn't want tablets. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this."

It just might make sense...

[Fear the Clam]

I see it as a combination of monitor, keyboard, and mouse. This way you can have a headless Mac running in the background with a cool-running, thin, relatively cheap portable. If you want to upgrade, you upgrade the box under the desk, not the tablet. This way, cheap people can use it with a G3/G4 as a cheap upgrade, and power users can use it with a G5. If the wireless range is good enough, you could use it to stream DVDs and Web stuff anywhere you wanted to use it.

The problems are (a) it would suck power like a mofo, so you'd have to plug it in, (b) the wireless range limits just how useful it could be before you'd have to start adding expensive, power-sucking, stuff like a hard drive to it, and (c) it you're doing a lot of keyboard entry, you'd want to hook up a keyboard, and probably sit down with this thing propped up like a conventional monitor.

Eehh, Inkwell

[Aqua OS X]

I've really really tried to use Ink. And I'm sorry, but it sucks. It's caused me the same problems it caused me when it was on the Newton.

Even if I write like an angel, it screws up my words and sentence spacing.

Moreover, I can honestly type a hell of a lot faster (50+ wpm) then I can handwrite or shorthand.

The Most Reasonable Tablet PC

[mdarksbane]

Would be one of the Lamp iMacs with a detacheable pressure-sensitive screen.

The first thought that went through my head when Steve introduced those things was that he was going to pop the screen off. Think about it; the biggest problem with tablets are managing to fit the processing power, hard drive, battery, ram, etc. into a thin enough shell that it feels like nothing more than a thin notebook you write on. I love my Tibook, but as light as it feels for a laptop, it's too generally unwieldy to be a comfortable writing tablet. I don't see you how could make anything more than a very underpowered, annoying laptop trying to fit everything into the screen and ignore all attempts at a keyboard. The point of a useful tablet is not to replace the functionality of a laptop; I can type twice as fast as I can write, and the form allows for a hard drive of useful size, a good video processor, etc. Where a tablet pc comes in handy is a replacement for a sketch pad, or for a system where you're only needing to point and click, like web browsing. These activities don't need good processors and large hard drives, and so current tablets lack both. The problem is that you must justify spending another thousand dollars, the cost of a separate computer, for just these little conveniences. A laptop and a wacom tablet are a much easier investment.

The solution? Leave the hard drive, the main processor, and the video memory where they belong; in the base of that little lamp. And when you want a full computer, leave the monitor in and you got it. But for those moments when you really feel like sitting on the couch and browsing the web (without, I may add, a Titanium oven burning through your pants), you just pop off the display and go sit down. Run everything over 802.11g and a custom version of x11; it's perfectly fast enough over a direct LAN connection for browsing the web. And suddenly, the tablet is not a neat-looking expensive extra, but a very, very cool extra feature of your main system. Tablets with current technology are too "niche" to be really useful or marketable. So don't separate them into their own niche; make the niche a part of an existing system. It's the only situation in which *I'd* ever consider one worth having, at least.

Why the Newton failed...

[patniemeyer]

The Newton failed because Apple refused to let anyone write software for it. I recall back in the day as a student having to get together with several of my friends to pony up $1000 to get the development kit for the priviledge of writing software for my Newton.

Look at Palm ten years later - it's a toy by comparison, but it has a world of software. It's also cheaper at the low end, but not that much.
Apple could have backed the Newton until it had a footing and created a new market by getting on board with the open source bandwagon earlier than they have.

I applaud them for everything they are doing now and love my Powerbook, but they really screwed the Newton.

Pat Niemeyer