I looked at that photo, and it's in an open clamshell mode, with the keyboard not concealed. Did you mean to point to another photo? In the pic to which you linked, it's still not usable as a tablet.
Exactly my point in another post. The post to which you replied has nothing to do with size, but I'll humor you. Why are these new largish devices being brought to market when everyone else seems to want small?
I for one would rather have something the size of a Newton, with a real screen, rather than something the size of an iPAQ. Roughly the same amount of power, but much more usable for a wider variety of applications. That said, most people don't want a PDA as a computer replacement, but merely as a media-viewer and organizer and possible wireless internet access.
I'm a Newton user and I've found pretty much the same thing. Syncing is for the weak! Why would one need sync, other than to make sure your data isn't gone when your PDA flakes out? Or, if your PDA isn't good enough to handle email and such directly from. Luckily, we Newton and Psion users don't have that problem.
PDA = Personal Digital Assistant PMT = Personal Mobile Tool
The only difference is who invented the terms, Apple with PDA and Sharp with PMT. They mean the same thing. A Palm OS > 5 device is a class of PDA, something slightly above an electronic organizer. The Newton, for which the term PDA was invented, is in the same class as the Zaurus- a device that's small enough to be with you most of the time, but allowing you to communicate and compute with power comparable to your desktop (very roughly, of course) but with an interface that more fits a smaller screen.
The Zaurus is a PDA, but it's a lot more than a Palm. But pretty much everything is.:P
It's funny- when myself or others talk about why we still use the Newton as our PDA platform of choice, people cry "but it's too large! the People have spoken and the People want something the size of a Palm V!" But now I'm told the People want something big with a keyboard.:P
About the only advantage Palm units had was battery life, and even that was being challenged by lithium-powered PPC units such as the iPAQ.
What iPAQs were you thinking of? The only iPAQ model I've seen that gets decent battery life is the iPAQ 3100 series (which I own). It has a black and white screen (rather than color) which is the reason it gets any reasonable battery life. But all the other iPAQ models with color screens get a piddly 2-3 hours of batter life. At least the Jornada 720 gets around 8 hours with still a color screen, at the expense of something that most people is too big to fit in a pocket. For me, a J720-sized device fits fine in my pocket, but it's too fragile to trust to a pocket, so I carried it around in the leather case that came with it.
Needless to say, I got sick of the small screen of the iPAQ and the fragile feel and unreadable screen in the out of doors of the Jornada 720 and will be going back to the Newton until a worth while PDA comes out. It looks like the OQO will be my next PDA, my next dekstop, and my next laptop. If that's not good enough, I guess I'll have to keep living with my Newt or make my own.
The problem with the XScale CPUs isn't that the OS doesn't support the instruction set, at least not entirely. You get less MIPS out of a 400 MHz XScale than you would out of a SA110 at 400 MHz. The XScale CPUs have a much higher MIPS-per-watt ratio than the StrongARM line, but a lower MIPS-per-megahertz. I think it's a worthy tradeoff, but regardless, the PalmOS won't get much more out of the XScale than PocketPC does. But I guess we'd have to actually have XScale PalmOS units available before we'll know, but hell, any decently clocked device running PalmOS 5 is still not available.
Interesting. Looks like the Zaurus is no longer a handheld tablet but rather a palmtop, micro-laptop like the Jornada 720. Doesn't look like the kb can be folded under the unit and used like a tablet either. Bummer.
Ani at least used to have a thing on the back of her CDs about it being OK to make copies for your friends, but that they should buy it if they can afford it. This was before Napsterchic was in effect. I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't into it anymore, she's lost some of her coolness.:P
Yeah, the 2100 was the last model made. It was actually produced by Newton Inc, which was spun-off from Apple at the time... Apple bought Newton Inc. back only to kill it, especially horrible considering that the independent Newton Inc. had turned a profit for the last couple quarters.
I have an upgraded 2000 (equivalent to a 2100), and it's amazing. I tried to switch to an iPAQ and then a Jornada 720 and sold my nice Newton setup, and I'm really regretting it. I bought a bare-bones Newton off of eBay (for around $65, they're a steal now-a-days!) and I wish I would've saved myself the trouble of going WinCE for a while.:/
The HWR on a OS 2.x Newt (2100, 2000, eMate, 130, 120 v2) is incredible. I could say I easily get 99%+ accuracy on my Newt while taking notes at a pen-and-paper speed. Eventually, I'll write a little app so that I can remote control my iBook from my Newton, using it's touchscreen as a Wacom-work-a-like, and the HWR for typing.:)
On the Newton, to move data for use in iSync, I can simply connect via ethernet or PPP/SLIP. I don't need to rely on some proprietary syncing/comm protocol like on the PalmOS. Converting between NewtonScript objects and SyncML also will be a pretty straightforward operation.
The easiest way to do this would be to create a web app, a module for NPDS (Newton Personal Data Sharing) or use Steve Weyer's Sloup.
There's a reason the Newton platform has kept on kicking, it is still a very easy platform to code for, user and developer friendly.
Look forward to Newton support soon for iSync... Luckily, getting Newton support is in a lot of ways, a lot more straightforward than it is for Palm OS. It's easily done via a plain old TCP/IP connection with a little app on the Newton side.:)
It basically boils down to "users shouldn't have to know anything about their computers to use them" I think this is bunk.
Unfortunately, just because you think something *should* be won't make it happen. Most users don't care about what toolkit powers an app. Even if they were forced into using an inconsistent, multi-toolkit OS like GNU/Linux+X11 by pigheaded idealists with no knowlege of what really works in the field, they wouldn't learn about what toolkit is behind which app. But since no one is forced to use Linux, they'd all just put Windows back on their machines, or better yet, buy a Mac.
Why should users have to know about what toolkit powers the app their using?
The great thing about Linux is that it's very malleable. It's OK for it to go the way of "point-and-grunt," if that's the kind of thing its users want. It's OK for this to happen because you don't have to use the software that makes it that way. You can continue using AfterStep and an old version of GNOME, no one will stop you.
I think it is too much to ask of users that they learn about things the OS should take care of. You think they should have to know about the way libraries work, relationships between them, and various widget sets. Why? Why not more details, or details about different parts of the system? Do you know how to program? In C and assembler? Could you write a driver for a new device for Linux? Both character and block?
I used Linux for 4 years as my primary OS. I know a lot about it, like a lot of Linux users, especially ones who didn't just start using with Mandrake 7. I'm not interested in using a Windows clone on top of X11. That is largely because most of the people who want this don't know how to do it right and because they are trying to both create the ultimate h4x0r OS for people who like to dick around with administrative tasks more than actually use their computers and create a WinDOS clone. I don't want either, myself.
I shouldn't have to take into consideration what toolkit I'm using just to get work done, regardless of whether this "work" is working on code, a spreadsheet, or a listening to mp3s.
I am a programmer. I know a couple languages really well, and little bits of way too many. However, when I sit down to use a computer, regardless of what OS it's running, I still expect it to just work.
Two years ago, I switched to Mac OS X, and I can't see ever going back. OS X is very far from perfect, but there's no way Linux will ever be the better option for me. BeOS maybe, or perhaps an actually modern OS if one ever comes out.
Riiight. Double-clicks didn't originate with M$. The Xerox Alto had the first double-clickable icons. If you're interested in the first commercially available system with such a convention, the Apple LIsa and then the Macintosh.
But why bother? If you're using IE or Gecko as a COM object in such a manner, you're tying it exclusively to Windows. At that point, why not just use IE, which (to me) seems faster and less memory-hungry than gecko on the same machine?
no no no- he meant to *buy* amd, not just one of their processors. if we all pool our allowances, we can buy the company and change policy- from the top!
The Cappuccino doesn't have a battery either, does it? I was under the impression that their MiniPC wasn't for mobility so much as portability- taking it places, or having a problem where a very small computer is a good idea, but not the kind of computer that could sit in your pack or your pocket.
Regarding computing environment, another link I forgot to mention is the PDA operating system/environment I'm working on called Dynapad. It is what I currently run on my Jornada 720 and will run on my OQO when I get one. Even now, on my iBook, I do most of what I do on my computer within the Squeak Smalltalk programming environment. The only thing I use Mac OS 9/X for is to browse the web. Squeak includes a pretty simple web browser, but it is insufficient for a lot of web sites. For some web browsing, I simply use Links from within a vt100 terminal app that is native on Squeak. I've written some code on the Squeak side of things to allow me to open Opera windows from within Squeak to automate it, but I imagine that this may be a bit harder on WinXP than it is currently with AppleScript on OS 9/X, but perhaps Windows Scripting Host would be a good replacement.
In all honesty, the only reason I *may* use WinXP on my OQO is for ParaGraph's CalliGrapher HWR software. As I said, Linux doesn't have any real HWR, so for me, it's pretty useless as a PDA or other pen-based platform. Which is why I have a Jornada 720 running WinCE instead of a Zaurus running Qtopia.
At this point, Dynapad wouldn't do quite everything that PocketPC does, but in the coming months and years it will. In about a 6 MB footprint, Dynapad includes:
* PIM applications: Notes, Todo, Names (Contacts), and Dates (Calendar) * Net apps: Simple web browser, IRC client, email client; and coming soon, a LiveJournal client as well as an app with very similar functionality to Watson/Sherlock 3 * A full Smalltalk development environment using the Morphic GUI toolkit; with the ability to create entirely new apps on the device itself, or modify existing apps to better work with the user's expectations * An OODB as the "blessed" means of data storage- makes sycing with desktop machines or other Dynapad devices as well as sharing the data via the internet very easy * Character recognition, rather like Graffiti,but without a dedicated space- write anywhere in a text box * A GUI builder for rapid application development * An advanced, extensible, dynamic, reflective architecture that allows end-user programming and scripting
For that sort of thing, the OQO is where it'll be at. The core of the device is a PDA-like device with a 640x480 4" touchscreen. It has built-in Airport and Bluetooth, Firewire and USB. There is a cable to give you a VGA port. In addition, there is a docking station to turn your OQO into a desktop machine, with usb, firewire, VGA, and I believe PCI slots even. Can't recall if there's PS/2, or if it's assumed one uses PS/2 for that. *And* there's a laptop docking shell, in which you plug your OQO, rather like a battery in the laptops found today., basically turning your OQO into a laptop with ports, builtin KB, touchpad/mouse device and screen.
The OQO has a 10 GB HD, 128 MB of RAM ( or more ) and a Transmeta 1 GHz processor. You can run regular x86 OSes- Linux and XP are the options available from the factory.
The Pen interface is great, if it's done well. For a PalmOS device, the pen interface falls apart when you're doing more than simple organization/PIM/game tasks. The Newton did it best, and the PocketPC does it OK- you can get a quite decent WPM (I can easily achieve 40-45 on my Newton) when you're using *real* handwriting recognition and not just a soft-keyboard or character recognition like graffiti or jot.
For me, the OQO is pretty much the Holy Grail of computing. When they're released (should be fairly soonish), I plan on selling my iBook and Jornada 720 to buy an OQO and use it as my main computer. Luckily, you can get *real* HWR on Windoze, but not Linux, not at least in a way that consumers can get to it. Motorolla has it's Lexicus QuickPrint system ported to x86 Linux, but there's no way to get it if you're not an OEM. QuickPrint isn't anywhere near as nice as Netwon HWR or ParaGraph's CalliGrapher, which is available on PocketPC, WinCE, and desktop Windoze.
Re:I have the solution ... wait ...
on
Accurate OCR?
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· Score: 2
It's gotta get better than 90%! The handwriting recognition system of the Newton OS (now found in OS X as "Inkwell") managed around 99% for my messy handwriting. I know that HWR != OCR, but one would imagine that recognizing much more readable printed words would be easier than my inconsistent and messy handwriting. (and yes, Newton OS HWR does rely on a neural net that learns your handwriting style.:) )
The Newton webserver- nHTTPd- part of the Newton Personal Data Sharing (NPDS) system has been mentioned on here a few times over the last 3 or 4 years I've been reading Slashdot.
Most of the time, I imagine that people see NPDS as a novelty, like running Apache on WinCE. And to some who run it, it is just a novelty. However, unlike some Htttpd for CE, NPDS actually manages to be useful. It serves your Dates, Names, Todo and Notes data, accessing the object-oriented database that makes up the Newton system for data storage. Of course, it can also serve regular HTML pages. I've actually seen a couple organizations that were using a Newton as a drop-in solution to managing contacts and meeting schedules. Incredible!
I suppose someone could write a C++ CGI that access the WinCE DBs for the analogous data on a WinCE/PocketPC device, but then you're stuck doing it in C++, which if a major pain in the ass compared to NewtonScript. Does anyone know of NSBasic (started on the Newton, of course:P) or a similar RAD language for the PocketPC can access the internal WinCE dbs?
In other news, someone is getting me a 2100 in exchange for attempting to develop a Squeak VM for the Newton! I recently had to sell my super-nice Newton 2100u setup, and I've missed my Newt a great deal. I guess it's one of those things where you don't understand it unless you've had a Newt yourself... but in my switch attempt to an iPAQ and more recently a Jornada 720, I've been left wanting in a lot of respects, and really can't wait to get my Newton back!
*You* were the one arguing that ObjC had the best implentation of GC available. I pointed out that ObjC's GC is good compared to Java's, but it still lacked. Having a poor GC is a weakness in Objective-C. If that isn't a signifigant enough of a weakness to you, why did you mention the Java/ObjC GC thing in the first place?
The issue of which GC algorithm is used isn't about language. Older Smalltalk implementations have mark-and-sweep GC like Java. A Smalltalk implementation *could* be done with the reference counting GC approach that, but I know of no Smalltalk implementations that settled on such a primitive form of GC- perhaps an older embedded VM?
While I agree with the assesment that if you want to use Smalltalk, use Smalltalk. But having a poor GC is still an aspect of ObjC that can cause problems and gobble up RAM. A generational GC could be added to a language that was otherwise just like ObjC. It would remove some of the rules and restrictions you have to deal with in ObjC now, but the language would mostly remain the same. ObjC isn't perfect, and it can stand to be improved upon.:)
Yup, I am aware of this. And it's cool. But for developing on Mac OS X, it's not terribly relevant unfortunately. Heck, even outside of that, it's still not standard Obj-C and not part of the much of the ObjC compiler installations out there, most of which are most likely either GCC's ObjC or Apple's ObjC.
Along the same lines, you could also use Smalltalk/MT or Smalltalk/X, two implementations of Smalltalk that compile to native code. All of the power of Smalltalk's incredibly dynamic runtime sysetm with the speed of Objective-C. Yet, with blocks. But again, unfortunately, those two implementations don't make up a large percentage of Smalltalk installations out there.
But blocks for ObjC is interesting all the same, esp for those who have no idea what blocks are.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes. I've seen the Clie, real-slick like. Well, let's hope this zaurus has this capability, could make it a really badass machine.
I looked at that photo, and it's in an open clamshell mode, with the keyboard not concealed. Did you mean to point to another photo? In the pic to which you linked, it's still not usable as a tablet.
Exactly my point in another post. The post to which you replied has nothing to do with size, but I'll humor you. Why are these new largish devices being brought to market when everyone else seems to want small?
I for one would rather have something the size of a Newton, with a real screen, rather than something the size of an iPAQ. Roughly the same amount of power, but much more usable for a wider variety of applications. That said, most people don't want a PDA as a computer replacement, but merely as a media-viewer and organizer and possible wireless internet access.
I'm a Newton user and I've found pretty much the same thing. Syncing is for the weak! Why would one need sync, other than to make sure your data isn't gone when your PDA flakes out? Or, if your PDA isn't good enough to handle email and such directly from. Luckily, we Newton and Psion users don't have that problem.
Why would something an inch think cut-off circulation? My wallet is more than an inch think, and plenty of people manage to carry those around.
What is the difference between PDA and PMT?
:P
PDA = Personal Digital Assistant
PMT = Personal Mobile Tool
The only difference is who invented the terms, Apple with PDA and Sharp with PMT. They mean the same thing. A Palm OS > 5 device is a class of PDA, something slightly above an electronic organizer. The Newton, for which the term PDA was invented, is in the same class as the Zaurus- a device that's small enough to be with you most of the time, but allowing you to communicate and compute with power comparable to your desktop (very roughly, of course) but with an interface that more fits a smaller screen.
The Zaurus is a PDA, but it's a lot more than a Palm. But pretty much everything is.
It's funny- when myself or others talk about why we still use the Newton as our PDA platform of choice, people cry "but it's too large! the People have spoken and the People want something the size of a Palm V!" But now I'm told the People want something big with a keyboard. :P
About the only advantage Palm units had was battery life, and even that was being challenged by lithium-powered PPC units such as the iPAQ.
What iPAQs were you thinking of? The only iPAQ model I've seen that gets decent battery life is the iPAQ 3100 series (which I own). It has a black and white screen (rather than color) which is the reason it gets any reasonable battery life. But all the other iPAQ models with color screens get a piddly 2-3 hours of batter life. At least the Jornada 720 gets around 8 hours with still a color screen, at the expense of something that most people is too big to fit in a pocket. For me, a J720-sized device fits fine in my pocket, but it's too fragile to trust to a pocket, so I carried it around in the leather case that came with it.
Needless to say, I got sick of the small screen of the iPAQ and the fragile feel and unreadable screen in the out of doors of the Jornada 720 and will be going back to the Newton until a worth while PDA comes out. It looks like the OQO will be my next PDA, my next dekstop, and my next laptop. If that's not good enough, I guess I'll have to keep living with my Newt or make my own.
The problem with the XScale CPUs isn't that the OS doesn't support the instruction set, at least not entirely. You get less MIPS out of a 400 MHz XScale than you would out of a SA110 at 400 MHz. The XScale CPUs have a much higher MIPS-per-watt ratio than the StrongARM line, but a lower MIPS-per-megahertz. I think it's a worthy tradeoff, but regardless, the PalmOS won't get much more out of the XScale than PocketPC does. But I guess we'd have to actually have XScale PalmOS units available before we'll know, but hell, any decently clocked device running PalmOS 5 is still not available.
Interesting. Looks like the Zaurus is no longer a handheld tablet but rather a palmtop, micro-laptop like the Jornada 720. Doesn't look like the kb can be folded under the unit and used like a tablet either. Bummer.
Well, I call my "device that does most of what I do on my desktop" Newton. :)
Ani at least used to have a thing on the back of her CDs about it being OK to make copies for your friends, but that they should buy it if they can afford it. This was before Napsterchic was in effect. I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't into it anymore, she's lost some of her coolness. :P
Yeah, the 2100 was the last model made. It was actually produced by Newton Inc, which was spun-off from Apple at the time... Apple bought Newton Inc. back only to kill it, especially horrible considering that the independent Newton Inc. had turned a profit for the last couple quarters.
:/
:)
I have an upgraded 2000 (equivalent to a 2100), and it's amazing. I tried to switch to an iPAQ and then a Jornada 720 and sold my nice Newton setup, and I'm really regretting it. I bought a bare-bones Newton off of eBay (for around $65, they're a steal now-a-days!) and I wish I would've saved myself the trouble of going WinCE for a while.
The HWR on a OS 2.x Newt (2100, 2000, eMate, 130, 120 v2) is incredible. I could say I easily get 99%+ accuracy on my Newt while taking notes at a pen-and-paper speed. Eventually, I'll write a little app so that I can remote control my iBook from my Newton, using it's touchscreen as a Wacom-work-a-like, and the HWR for typing.
I'm serious.
On the Newton, to move data for use in iSync, I can simply connect via ethernet or PPP/SLIP. I don't need to rely on some proprietary syncing/comm protocol like on the PalmOS. Converting between NewtonScript objects and SyncML also will be a pretty straightforward operation.
The easiest way to do this would be to create a web app, a module for NPDS (Newton Personal Data Sharing) or use Steve Weyer's Sloup.
There's a reason the Newton platform has kept on kicking, it is still a very easy platform to code for, user and developer friendly.
Look forward to Newton support soon for iSync... Luckily, getting Newton support is in a lot of ways, a lot more straightforward than it is for Palm OS. It's easily done via a plain old TCP/IP connection with a little app on the Newton side. :)
It basically boils down to "users shouldn't have to know anything about their computers to use them" I think this is bunk.
Unfortunately, just because you think something *should* be won't make it happen. Most users don't care about what toolkit powers an app. Even if they were forced into using an inconsistent, multi-toolkit OS like GNU/Linux+X11 by pigheaded idealists with no knowlege of what really works in the field, they wouldn't learn about what toolkit is behind which app. But since no one is forced to use Linux, they'd all just put Windows back on their machines, or better yet, buy a Mac.
Why should users have to know about what toolkit powers the app their using?
The great thing about Linux is that it's very malleable. It's OK for it to go the way of "point-and-grunt," if that's the kind of thing its users want. It's OK for this to happen because you don't have to use the software that makes it that way. You can continue using AfterStep and an old version of GNOME, no one will stop you.
I think it is too much to ask of users that they learn about things the OS should take care of. You think they should have to know about the way libraries work, relationships between them, and various widget sets. Why? Why not more details, or details about different parts of the system? Do you know how to program? In C and assembler? Could you write a driver for a new device for Linux? Both character and block?
I used Linux for 4 years as my primary OS. I know a lot about it, like a lot of Linux users, especially ones who didn't just start using with Mandrake 7. I'm not interested in using a Windows clone on top of X11. That is largely because most of the people who want this don't know how to do it right and because they are trying to both create the ultimate h4x0r OS for people who like to dick around with administrative tasks more than actually use their computers and create a WinDOS clone. I don't want either, myself.
I shouldn't have to take into consideration what toolkit I'm using just to get work done, regardless of whether this "work" is working on code, a spreadsheet, or a listening to mp3s.
I am a programmer. I know a couple languages really well, and little bits of way too many. However, when I sit down to use a computer, regardless of what OS it's running, I still expect it to just work.
Two years ago, I switched to Mac OS X, and I can't see ever going back. OS X is very far from perfect, but there's no way Linux will ever be the better option for me. BeOS maybe, or perhaps an actually modern OS if one ever comes out.
Riiight. Double-clicks didn't originate with M$. The Xerox Alto had the first double-clickable icons. If you're interested in the first commercially available system with such a convention, the Apple LIsa and then the Macintosh.
And I want the Newton OS on any platform that isn't dead! But guess what! Neither of us will get what we want!
But why bother? If you're using IE or Gecko as a COM object in such a manner, you're tying it exclusively to Windows. At that point, why not just use IE, which (to me) seems faster and less memory-hungry than gecko on the same machine?
no no no- he meant to *buy* amd, not just one of their processors. if we all pool our allowances, we can buy the company and change policy- from the top!
(heh)
The Cappuccino doesn't have a battery either, does it? I was under the impression that their MiniPC wasn't for mobility so much as portability- taking it places, or having a problem where a very small computer is a good idea, but not the kind of computer that could sit in your pack or your pocket.
Regarding computing environment, another link I forgot to mention is the PDA operating system/environment I'm working on called Dynapad. It is what I currently run on my Jornada 720 and will run on my OQO when I get one. Even now, on my iBook, I do most of what I do on my computer within the Squeak Smalltalk programming environment. The only thing I use Mac OS 9/X for is to browse the web. Squeak includes a pretty simple web browser, but it is insufficient for a lot of web sites. For some web browsing, I simply use Links from within a vt100 terminal app that is native on Squeak. I've written some code on the Squeak side of things to allow me to open Opera windows from within Squeak to automate it, but I imagine that this may be a bit harder on WinXP than it is currently with AppleScript on OS 9/X, but perhaps Windows Scripting Host would be a good replacement.
In all honesty, the only reason I *may* use WinXP on my OQO is for ParaGraph's CalliGrapher HWR software. As I said, Linux doesn't have any real HWR, so for me, it's pretty useless as a PDA or other pen-based platform. Which is why I have a Jornada 720 running WinCE instead of a Zaurus running Qtopia.
At this point, Dynapad wouldn't do quite everything that PocketPC does, but in the coming months and years it will. In about a 6 MB footprint, Dynapad includes:
* PIM applications: Notes, Todo, Names (Contacts), and Dates (Calendar)
* Net apps: Simple web browser, IRC client, email client; and coming soon, a LiveJournal client as well as an app with very similar functionality to Watson/Sherlock 3
* A full Smalltalk development environment using the Morphic GUI toolkit; with the ability to create entirely new apps on the device itself, or modify existing apps to better work with the user's expectations
* An OODB as the "blessed" means of data storage- makes sycing with desktop machines or other Dynapad devices as well as sharing the data via the internet very easy
* Character recognition, rather like Graffiti,but without a dedicated space- write anywhere in a text box
* A GUI builder for rapid application development
* An advanced, extensible, dynamic, reflective architecture that allows end-user programming and scripting
For that sort of thing, the OQO is where it'll be at. The core of the device is a PDA-like device with a 640x480 4" touchscreen. It has built-in Airport and Bluetooth, Firewire and USB. There is a cable to give you a VGA port. In addition, there is a docking station to turn your OQO into a desktop machine, with usb, firewire, VGA, and I believe PCI slots even. Can't recall if there's PS/2, or if it's assumed one uses PS/2 for that. *And* there's a laptop docking shell, in which you plug your OQO, rather like a battery in the laptops found today., basically turning your OQO into a laptop with ports, builtin KB, touchpad/mouse device and screen.
The OQO has a 10 GB HD, 128 MB of RAM ( or more ) and a Transmeta 1 GHz processor. You can run regular x86 OSes- Linux and XP are the options available from the factory.
The Pen interface is great, if it's done well. For a PalmOS device, the pen interface falls apart when you're doing more than simple organization/PIM/game tasks. The Newton did it best, and the PocketPC does it OK- you can get a quite decent WPM (I can easily achieve 40-45 on my Newton) when you're using *real* handwriting recognition and not just a soft-keyboard or character recognition like graffiti or jot.
For me, the OQO is pretty much the Holy Grail of computing. When they're released (should be fairly soonish), I plan on selling my iBook and Jornada 720 to buy an OQO and use it as my main computer. Luckily, you can get *real* HWR on Windoze, but not Linux, not at least in a way that consumers can get to it. Motorolla has it's Lexicus QuickPrint system ported to x86 Linux, but there's no way to get it if you're not an OEM. QuickPrint isn't anywhere near as nice as Netwon HWR or ParaGraph's CalliGrapher, which is available on PocketPC, WinCE, and desktop Windoze.
It's gotta get better than 90%! The handwriting recognition system of the Newton OS (now found in OS X as "Inkwell") managed around 99% for my messy handwriting. I know that HWR != OCR, but one would imagine that recognizing much more readable printed words would be easier than my inconsistent and messy handwriting. (and yes, Newton OS HWR does rely on a neural net that learns your handwriting style. :) )
The Newton webserver- nHTTPd- part of the Newton Personal Data Sharing (NPDS) system has been mentioned on here a few times over the last 3 or 4 years I've been reading Slashdot.
:P) or a similar RAD language for the PocketPC can access the internal WinCE dbs?
Most of the time, I imagine that people see NPDS as a novelty, like running Apache on WinCE. And to some who run it, it is just a novelty. However, unlike some Htttpd for CE, NPDS actually manages to be useful. It serves your Dates, Names, Todo and Notes data, accessing the object-oriented database that makes up the Newton system for data storage. Of course, it can also serve regular HTML pages. I've actually seen a couple organizations that were using a Newton as a drop-in solution to managing contacts and meeting schedules. Incredible!
I suppose someone could write a C++ CGI that access the WinCE DBs for the analogous data on a WinCE/PocketPC device, but then you're stuck doing it in C++, which if a major pain in the ass compared to NewtonScript. Does anyone know of NSBasic (started on the Newton, of course
In other news, someone is getting me a 2100 in exchange for attempting to develop a Squeak VM for the Newton! I recently had to sell my super-nice Newton 2100u setup, and I've missed my Newt a great deal. I guess it's one of those things where you don't understand it unless you've had a Newt yourself... but in my switch attempt to an iPAQ and more recently a Jornada 720, I've been left wanting in a lot of respects, and really can't wait to get my Newton back!
*You* were the one arguing that ObjC had the best implentation of GC available. I pointed out that ObjC's GC is good compared to Java's, but it still lacked. Having a poor GC is a weakness in Objective-C. If that isn't a signifigant enough of a weakness to you, why did you mention the Java/ObjC GC thing in the first place?
:)
The issue of which GC algorithm is used isn't about language. Older Smalltalk implementations have mark-and-sweep GC like Java. A Smalltalk implementation *could* be done with the reference counting GC approach that, but I know of no Smalltalk implementations that settled on such a primitive form of GC- perhaps an older embedded VM?
While I agree with the assesment that if you want to use Smalltalk, use Smalltalk. But having a poor GC is still an aspect of ObjC that can cause problems and gobble up RAM. A generational GC could be added to a language that was otherwise just like ObjC. It would remove some of the rules and restrictions you have to deal with in ObjC now, but the language would mostly remain the same. ObjC isn't perfect, and it can stand to be improved upon.
Yup, I am aware of this. And it's cool. But for developing on Mac OS X, it's not terribly relevant unfortunately. Heck, even outside of that, it's still not standard Obj-C and not part of the much of the ObjC compiler installations out there, most of which are most likely either GCC's ObjC or Apple's ObjC.
:)
Along the same lines, you could also use Smalltalk/MT or Smalltalk/X, two implementations of Smalltalk that compile to native code. All of the power of Smalltalk's incredibly dynamic runtime sysetm with the speed of Objective-C. Yet, with blocks. But again, unfortunately, those two implementations don't make up a large percentage of Smalltalk installations out there.
But blocks for ObjC is interesting all the same, esp for those who have no idea what blocks are.