[Sigia-l] Friday quiz: Madonna's Sex Book

[Skot Nelson]

On Sep-23-2005, at 7:41 AM, Fortune Elkins wrote:

> Since I'm a girl the form factor was never a problem for me as they  
> are
> about the size of a clutch purse.

I found the Newton's size to be an interesting issue, in the wake of  
the introduction of the Palm Pilot.

The story was that Jeff Hawkins felt that the Palm had to fit in a  
shirt pocket or, presumably, the breast pocket of a suit jacket.  
This, combined with the original Graffiti's dedicated writing area,  
resulted in an extremely small screen that I felt compromised the  
products usability fairly severely.

Whether you thought a Newton was too big largely depended on how you  
approached it: I viewed it as being like a daytimer - a business  
tool, not a social one. I never had a problem carrying it, but I also  
left it at home occasionally (night on the town, so to speak.) The  
CEO of the company I was working for at the time felt the same way,  
and the IT department hated me when I convinced him to buy a  
MessagePad 2000 - it was a Windows shop.

Usability is all about these trade-offs of course. I think the newton  
struck a better balance than all but the most recent crop of WinCE  
devices have. Screens are finally getting big enough, resolution is  
good, and the available aftermarket keyboards have made some of these  
viable laptop alternatives. Of course they also cost as much as a  
small laptop (i.e. 12" iBook is $999, roughly comparable to a tripped  
out high end WinCE machine) so for many people the laptop will make  
more sense still.
--
Skot Nelson
skot at penguinstorm.com

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