In the early 2000s I had been a Newton user for more than half a decade. I'd owned a Newton 110, and then an upgraded Newton 2000. Later I heard that eMate 300 had come out, but being a college student still paying off the Apple Loan for my Newton 2000 (which was worth it BTW) I didn't run out immediately and buy a eMate 300. Looked cool, but by then I'd seen the Tiger Electronics laptop for kids and the eMate looked a lot like that.
Years passed, I was at a flea market, and some guy was selling eMates for like $10 or $20 a piece. Wasn't much. I bought three of them I believe.
Used one, liked it, and then it had the ribbon cable jaggies thing happen. That is now a spare parts eMate for my other eMate. Somewhere I have a new ribbon cable for the other if I can ever find it. Have moved since I got it. Yikes!
And the OTHER eMate I did the hinge repair.
So through the lens of time I find I am very impressed with the eMate. Here are some lessons learned in recent times about the eMate verses the Newton 2000 even though they both run Newton OS 2.x
- Emate, despite being 15% of the megahertz the 2000 had, is actually a very capable Newton.
Well, luckily, I managed to buy a memory upgrade board when Newton fans were making those. That might help in this a bit. However, saying a computer has so many more of a certain speed is sometimes offset a bit by a more efficient processor. And that is the case with the eMate.
- The keyboard is almost passable.
That is to say the keyboard is almost a nice experience. I find myself going "ow ow oww.." on how cramped it is. Just cramped ENOUGH to notice after a few minutes. Love the function keys though. Don't like the sliders for the volume and brightness.
- NCX makes a good keyboard for the eMate.
Or really the keyboard from the desktop through NCX is good for all the Newtons that can use it.
- eMates cannot play mp3s.
I mean, they can, but like 2 seconds, then they stop the mp3. But they do play mods extremely well. And, get this...
-eMates CAN record an audio note!
Yep, it's true. If you beam over a audio note from a Newton 2x00 then you can duplicate that audio note. For the microphone you'll need to fashion a audio-in cable and use the interconnect port. It's a bit of work, but I can say I did record a audio note with a eMate!
-Now in my 50s, I like the slightly bigger screen with brighter backlight
Well, the eMate is bit more expendable than my Newton 2000 so I tend to enjoy the backlight AND I have that other spare parts eMate for later. So the eMate is just a blast to work. And to be honest, the Newton 2000 is getting hard to read things on it. They really designed devices for the young with great eye sight.
- eMates are very limited on the PCMCIA Linear Flash cards they can use
I've played with many PCMCIA Linear Flash cards, and while the Emate can read from all of them, they can't write to many of them except the Apple branded cards and one Pretec card I have. However...
- ATA Flash Card drivers work on eMate
Yep, my eMate loves the ATA flash cards. When I was installing the ATA drivers it would crash my eMate at first. I took a backup with the registration of the ATA card drivers in there, and brought that over. After some slight adjusting, the eMate was able to read the ATA card, and not complain about not being able to write to it!
So these are some, but not all of the hacks and facts of eMates I've found so far.
What can you say about eMates?
Any special software just the eMate you'd recommend?
Things that the eMate does better than the rest?
Things the eMate can't do?
