Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Apple
Newton bests Windows UMPC in Cnet competition
Way back in March Dave Caolo wrote a post called 'I already have an Ultra-Mobile PC: It's called a Newton' with tongue planted firmly in cheek. It would seem that Cnet UK agrees with Dave.They pitted a Messagepad 2100 against a Samsung Q1 and unbelievably the Newton won. It won based on battery life (two double AA's power it for 30 hours) and price. I'm not expecting to see a resurgence of Newtons out there but it would be nice, wouldn't it?
[via jkOnTheRun]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alex P said 9:04PM on 7-27-2006
is the titled supposed to be "bests"?
and I was reading this on digg and the whole time thought about that article that i read here a while back.
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Scott McNulty said 9:07PM on 7-27-2006
Whilst I am often guilty of typos, this time I am not. 'Bests' is a perfectly valid word for the title, as in 'TUAW bests the competition.'
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Alex P said 9:20PM on 7-27-2006
ah okay
: ]
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Nitewing98 said 9:27PM on 7-27-2006
I'm not surprised by this result. I owned a Newton 130 and despite the Newton's reputation (mostly due to the Original Message Pad being a bit clunky and doing bad handwriting translation), the later Newts were VERY usable. I used mine for a long time, even got a USB to serial converter for my iMac.
I still think it's sad that Apple invented the PDA and then Jobs killed it. I understand his reasons for doing so, to focus on the Mac, but wish the Newton still existed. It was a great machine, and mine read my writing very well, both print and longhand.
I even downloaded books to read on it, read the original "Frankenstein" on it with no problem. The 130 is sadly missed.
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Derek said 9:38PM on 7-27-2006
OMG, yeah right. It has a slow processor, outdated OS, B&W screen, and most of all, it is unsupported.
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extensor said 9:46PM on 7-27-2006
OMG is right as in, the new hotness UMPC got beat by its outdated, unsupported foe. OMG indeed.
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justin Hallman said 11:27PM on 7-27-2006
omg. he omg'ed you.
ha. i got 500 clams here waiting for apple to rebestest them all.
iWant.
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ben said 12:42AM on 7-28-2006
That's kind of funny. I had a Newton for a while and sold it on ebay. I can't recall which it was (first model with backlighting... 330?), but it was truly horrid. Lucky for me, it was mint and someone gave me $75 for it. :D
I wonder if the Zune will go the way of the UMPC... big announcement, viral ads, and tons of marketing and then... nothing.
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Nitewing98 said 3:27AM on 7-28-2006
Ben wrote: I had a Newton for a while and sold it on ebay. I can't recall which it was (first model with backlighting... 330?), but it was truly horrid. Lucky for me, it was mint and someone gave me $75 for it.
It was a 130, and that was probably me that paid the $75 bucks on eBay, since that is exactly what I paid for mine. You didn't know what you had...
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Christian said 6:33AM on 7-28-2006
I had the Newton 130 and the Messagepad 2000 which i had upgraded to the 2100.
This was probably the best PDA i ever owned in relation to the time then!
Todays PDAs and/or smartphones have got better and multimedia and color screens and so on.
Compared to the revolution
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Chad said 8:40AM on 7-28-2006
They're not all that cheap really. I sold a Message Pad 2100, complete with original box and manuals, for $275 on eBay a few years back. That's really quite expensive for a 10 year old, commercially unsucsessful PDA... Must be an apple thing, I recently sold a 4 year old PC and a Mac G4 cube, both were from the same year and equivalent performance. The PC was worth about $40, the Mac $250...
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SubGenius said 10:24AM on 7-28-2006
The newton fills a space that is lacking today since the death spiral of Palm.
Now would be a great time to unleash a PDA that focuses on simplicity as and functionality as the original Palms and Newton did.
Apple could kick it up a notch and put an e-ink screen and NAND flash memory in for weeks of battery life.
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John from Buffalo said 3:07PM on 7-28-2006
Fucking Newton trolls just won't die, will they.
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Damage said 10:27AM on 7-29-2006
So? My 4 years old Clie could probably beat the pants off the UMPC if you were to rate it on Battery Life (anywhere from 4-8 depending on backlight, MP3 playback, etc) and price. It'd been more interesting to compare the Newton to the CE devices or the Windows Mobile powered PDAs.
This was about as scientific and logical as Spontaneous Generation or CNET's MP3 vs. DRM'ed WMA debate.
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Mike R said 12:30PM on 7-29-2006
Those saddened by Palm's death spiral should check out Symbian (Series 60 and Series 80).
Windows Mobile is nothing but solid garbage. Between the half-implemented screen orientation modes, the the laggy performance, short battery life, and useless applications that come with it (Pocket Word is a joke... "Just like the Desktop Version" my @$$!") , to things like freezing when Bluetooth tethering (to the awful bluetooth implementation to BEGIN with) , It's amazing Microsoft sells any of them.
I was dumb enough to buy one. Thank goodness for eBay.
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