A few years ago, in a galaxy that seems far, far away... it's been too traumatic to remember exactly when... John Sculley, then Apple's fearless leader, pronounced to the world the wonders of the not too distant future when we would all have a new tool he called a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). This wonder would handle all of our information, be connected to everything, and free our time to do as we pleased, no longer tied to the paper files we could never find anyway. He then introduced the first generation of this wonder tool...the Apple Newton MessagePad.

All I remember of what followed were the damning cartoons in Doonesbury (tm) that made fun of the Newton's handwriting recognition and doomed this valiant first effort. Apple followed with the MessagePad 100, 110, 120, and 130. I bought in around two years ago when the mailorder firms were unloading their MessagePad 100's for around $150 (down from their original lofty prices of $900!), clearing out their inventories.

Because of the bad press, I didn't expect much, but I had been in the market for a handheld organizer, and had nearly purchased one of Sharp's neat devices, and thought, what the hell! The price was right, so I gave it a shot. The press was right, its handwriting recognition was poor. But, it had everything the Sharp Wizard had, and cost a third of what I was prepared to pay. So, I got my calendar, address book, appointments, notepad, reminders, calculator, and the like, and they worked fine with the on-screen keyboard.

Also around this time, a small company came out with a product called Grafitti (tm) that allowed you to enter something called gestures to form letters that made up for the Newton's poor handwriting recognition. Gestures are a sort of shorthand where you draw a shape with a single stroke that's similar to the letter or number you want. The letter A looks something like a caret symbol, or tent shape, pointing up. Some of the gestures look just as their letter counterparts do, but most don't. However, after about half an hour of practice it was pretty easy to begin using the strange writing style effectively, and I did. Apple's poor handwriting recognition engine made Grafitti an overnight success!

Apple had already followed with the MessagePad 110 when I picked up the 100, and came out with the 120 while I was learning to use Grafitti, so when I heard the 130 was due out in the Spring of 1996, I took the opportunity at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in January of 1996 to purchase a sharply discounted MessagePad 120.

Apple had completely reworked the recognition engine for the 120 and it worked beautifully, especially if you turned off the handwriting (full word/cursive) recognition, and used the handprinting (individual letter) recognition instead. The cursive recognition engine required you to write an entire word, tying the letters together as you do naturally. When you were finished, it would match the strokes you used to form the word collectively, guess at the letters they were composed of, look up the supposed word in its built-in dictionary, and display the results on screen.

This worked alright if you formed the letters carefully as you wrote them, and had the benefit that the Newton would remember what you had done, so that its guess would become better as you used it. It also meant if you allowed anyone else to use your MessagePad for even a little while, YOUR recognition would degrade.

The benefit of using the printing option instead was that only simple block printing was required. The engine would wait while you spelled out a word on screen, and when you paused (you set the amount of delay), it assumed you were done with the word. It would then display the word with an uncanny 95% accuracy.

Hand printing, if not hand writing, recognition had arrived! And the 120 was so much faster than the 100 that I could now actually TAKE NOTES in real time at meetings, or as someone was giving me some information to record. And, I no longer had to use the Grafitti product's tedious gesturing technique. I could start printing out words with their actual letters. I literally STOPPED using paper whenever I had the MessagePad with me.

So, out of the box handprinting recognition finally worked! Unfortunately, Apple's Marketing Department didn't, so no one except the owners learned the great secret. As I was enjoying my new found productivity, Apple released the MessagePad 130. It basically only added more memory and backlighting, but now opened the door for the next big step...the Internet.

The extra memory permitted Apple to add some new communication software to the Newton that now permitted one to actually connect to the Internet, upload and download email, and view World Wide Web (WWW) pages on screen. You could now actually surf the web! A real treat for us technoweenies! But, I made due with my 120 since it was so much faster and useful than my old 100, and waited, and did my surfing with my Mac.

Then in the fall of 1996, word began to leak out about the MessagePad 2000, due in the new year. This powerhouse would use the new, low power, 160Mhz StrongARM RISC processor (compared to the slower 20Mhz CPU in the 120/130), and have a throughput nearly 10 times that of the 130!

Additionally, it added a second PC Card slot, that permitted a storage card AND a modem to be installed at the same time. And, it had a 50% larger screen (now half of a traditional PC screen, or 480x320 pixels) that could display 16 shades of gray, so it was now possible to download web pages with graphics displayed in grayscale (looks like a black and white photo). And, it added a built-in microphone and larger speaker so that you could actually record notes at a meeting! And, its infrared port was now IrDA compliant so that you could actually just point it at an HP LaserJet 5M with its IrDA sensor and click print...no more wires!

So, let's cut to the chase. I love my new MessagePad 2000! It's NOT vaporware. Everything actually works as advertised. It's incredibly fast, displaying selected items virtually instantaneously. (Pocket Quicken (kludgey at best with the 120) is responsive and useful.) Its hand printing recognition is now not only accurate, but immediate. Yes, I have surfed the web and downloaded pictures with it. Yes, I have both sent and received email over the Internet with it. And both worked flawlessly. In fact, the only mystery with the MessagePad 2000 is why Apple would want to sell off this Division. It's a winner!

It's sad that a cartoon strip years ago so doomed this marvel's reputation in the marketplace. It's also ironic that the new Palm Pilot (which has the old Grafitti gesture recognition software built into it that Apple's early missteps made successful) is being hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and selling like hotcakes! Why would anyone want to pay $600 for the new Palm Pilot Pro with no real hand printing recognition, no PC Card expansion slots, a tiny black and white screen, just so it can sit in a cute little docking station? And, really, why would anyone want to run subsets of Microsoft's bloatware on a PDA sized box with a chicklet keyboard and NO handwriting recognition capabilities for a comparable price?

For $999 (or less if you look around) you could have a real, full-fledged, Pentium/PowerPC RISC class CPU in a 1.4 pound handheld PDA that completely REPLACES the need for a laptop (forget comparing it to the Sharp organizer), that has full communications features, backlighting, a power source that measures usable time in weeks, not hours. That works with Macs AND Windows equally well... That comes with built-in calendar, address book, appointments, reminders, notepad, calculator, email, Internet web browsing, word processing, spreadsheet (compatible with Excel 5), screen rotation... It boggles the mind.

If you're a business professional who's tired of lugging a 7.5 pound shoulder breaker through airports, or just a technoweenie who likes new toys, it's hard to go wrong with this wonder. You should grab yourself one while you can.

- Dave Marsh