Which new hardware, exactly, will they switch to? A close co-worker of mine refuses to lay his Newton to rest, asserting that there are no modern products that compare. This is a subjective opinion of his, of course, but it establishes the sentiments that the users of this ancient PDA seem to share.
They're going about this all wrong. When we need to get something done remotely, we want our data, not the satisfying user experience that we create over time in our own home/office environments. Sure, the average user might get excited about wallpaper and customized cursors, but those individuals will be the last to adopt anyway, so they're a poor target market.
I don't understand why more development isn't going into extremely intelligent web-based platforms that can provide us with all of our data through a browser window sans screen grabbing. Making it easy to run AutoCAD 2004 from grandma's 486 when you're away from the office is futile.
'Someone' needs to take this approach: The server is still your computer, and you access it by logging in to a secure web server portion. This layer acts as the middle man between the client and your data. You specify where on your machine the relevant data is located, and the web software feeds it to you in a friendly way. That way, the only bandwidth usage will be for minimal XHTML and CSS code, and the data you need. Mainly, the system should include all the features of a PDA, or generally a utility platform (notes, email, calendar, etc). Heck, it could be made extensible, and a plugin could be an mp3 player that allows you to browse your library, and when you select the song, it streams it at the requested bitrate.
The technology for this exists, but I've yet to see it combined efficiently.
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Who exactly is Ursula Le Guin?
Which new hardware, exactly, will they switch to? A close co-worker of mine refuses to lay his Newton to rest, asserting that there are no modern products that compare. This is a subjective opinion of his, of course, but it establishes the sentiments that the users of this ancient PDA seem to share.
They're going about this all wrong. When we need to get something done remotely, we want our data, not the satisfying user experience that we create over time in our own home/office environments. Sure, the average user might get excited about wallpaper and customized cursors, but those individuals will be the last to adopt anyway, so they're a poor target market.
I don't understand why more development isn't going into extremely intelligent web-based platforms that can provide us with all of our data through a browser window sans screen grabbing. Making it easy to run AutoCAD 2004 from grandma's 486 when you're away from the office is futile.
'Someone' needs to take this approach: The server is still your computer, and you access it by logging in to a secure web server portion. This layer acts as the middle man between the client and your data. You specify where on your machine the relevant data is located, and the web software feeds it to you in a friendly way. That way, the only bandwidth usage will be for minimal XHTML and CSS code, and the data you need. Mainly, the system should include all the features of a PDA, or generally a utility platform (notes, email, calendar, etc). Heck, it could be made extensible, and a plugin could be an mp3 player that allows you to browse your library, and when you select the song, it streams it at the requested bitrate.
The technology for this exists, but I've yet to see it combined efficiently.