Penpoint! was Re: 10 years

From: Philip Pemberton <philpem_at_dsl.pipex.com>
Date: Sat Oct 5 02:34:00 2002

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Bob Shannon
  To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
  Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 11:41 PM
  Subject: Penpoint! was Re: 10 years
  Back when I worked at NEC, we had done a lot of work on a tablet-based portable PC called
  a VersaPad. The VersaPad was a fairly slick little 486SX based machine with a paper-white
  mono VGA display and a MicroTouch digitizer. It used an active, RF-linked 'pen' stylus with
  mouse-like buttons, etc.

OMG... I remember seeing a tablet-based machine in a computer store a few years ago, when 486 SX/25s were still "top of the range" as far as laptops were concerned. A fast-talking salesman walked up to my Mum and then proceeded to demo a rather nice tablet-based PC, followed by a very nice Samsung NoteMaster laptop. I told my Mum to get the tablet PC. She said "The laptop's better". Guess which one she ended up buying... Yup. A Samsung NoteMaster 486S/25N. As proprietary as hell - Samsung BIOS, proprietary hard drive, floppy drive, RAM, name it. And now the 3.6V lithium battery is duff. And to top it all off, Tadiran (original manufacturer) don't make another one like it. And I'm trading her my Compaq Contura 420C (after I put Win3.1 and Word 6 on it) for it. Why do I get the feeling I'm making a huge mistake?
Received on Sat Oct 05 2002 - 02:34:00 BST