Zoomer experiences
starnet!apple!trantor.harris-atd.com!chuck (Chuck Musciano)
Message-id: <9310201925.AA24455@trantor.harris-atd.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 93 15:25:05 EDT
From: starnet!apple!trantor.harris-atd.com!chuck (Chuck Musciano)
To: zoomer-list-1993@grot.starconn.com
Subject: Zoomer experiences
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Content-Length: 7743
Status: OR
I've been using my Zoomer for about a week now, and have been jotting
down various and sundry observations:
Overall, this is a nice device. A little slow, but with lots of
features and bundled tools. I'm very happy with it, and can't wait to
start writing apps for it!
First off, the bugs:
* While playing with offline mail composition using AOL, I created
and then deleted a mail message. Around that time, GEOS reported
a KR-09 system error and crashed. The Zoomer rebooted (amusing
seeing a plain old DOS boot on a device in your hand) and came back
up at the same spot, no data lost. Still, bothersome, and an
indication that GEOS still needs to fixing.
* The world clock at one point forgot my home city. Don't ask me
why.
* I created a todo item (text: "Mail Dad's gift") that didn't display
in the todo list. The priority displayed, but the text was blank.
I edited the text and then deleted what I had added, and the item
subsequently displayed correctly. Weird.
Now, some odd behavior:
* Some capital letters are *impossible* to write, especially in the
smaller data entry areas. Capital P is pretty tough, as is S.
* You can go into the File Manager (more on that later) and go to the
A: drive and try to run .EXE files. If you run SDISK.EXE, you'll be
on the verge of reformatting your internal RAM drive. The screen
blanks, and then says "Press A to continue, or B to abort." Pressing
B stops SDISK, but only after a *long* scary delay. I can't believe
they left in something this dangerous and this easy to get to.
* The dictionary is really great, but can take a while to find
spelling candidates. It really needs to put up the hourglass cursor
during that process.
* The included pen is pretty cheesy. The top came off of mine on the
second day! I await my free pen that the included coupon promises.
* On the keyboard, right and left shift don't toggle each other. If you
press left shift, the keys shift. If you press right shift, the keys
unshift, but the left shift doesn't de-highlight. Obviously an
oversight.
* You can't make Thanksgiving a correct repeating event. I put in
Thanksgiving for 1993, and made it a Month/Day repeating event.
Now, Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, but the Zoomer
remembers it as the last Thursday, making it break in Novembers
with five Thursdays.
And some disappointments:
* The sketch pages do not have deferred recognition! You can defer
recognition in things like todo entries and address book fields,
but not in the sketch pages. This is a bother. I'd like to quickly
write a bunch of stuff, and later convert the ink. You *can* keep
writing during conversion, but you tend to get sloppy quickly.
* The date book doesn't advance to tomorrow when midnight rolls around.
It always opens at your last view, so you have to tap the date and
tap "Today" to get to today's view. A bother.
* While you can create multiple documents with all the tools, you must
use the file manager to delete things. This is a major deal for
non-DOS users. You should be able to delete things wherever you
create them.
* The todo list items are in their own little world. You can't cut
text from them and paste it elsewhere, and you can't paste stuff
into them. You can't even change the date on a todo! This needs
work. I should say that, except for this, I really like the Date
Book app.
* The Zoomer purports to have a list of airport codes, but is missing
*my* local airport: Melbourne, Florida, code MLB. This is actually
a fairly busy airport, and should be in the list. It is the closest
big airport to Kennedy Space Center, if nothing else.
And now the cool stuff:
* I like the pen-based interface. Things are easy to find and interact
with, and responsiveness is fairly good. I especially like the
direct manipulation of note book pages, sliding them up and down
and indenting them with the pen. I like writing on the month view of
the calendar, and wish you could do the same on the week view.
* The forms calculator is nifty, and the online references are
actually useful! Having the file manager is really nice, and I
rummaged around the file systems quite a bit. I anxiously await the
Conenction Kit, so I can copy GeoCalc to the Zoomer to see what
happens when you try to run it.
* While the Newton is definitely faster, the Zoomer wins by far on the
bundled tools. You can do a lot with a Zoomer right out of the box,
with things like Pocket Quicken and AOL built in.
* My 26 month old daughter was able to learn how to draw on a sketch
page and tap the "X" to delete things in about 15 minutes. She now
asks to draw on my computer each night, and has renamed her MagnaDoodle
to be her "computer"! I suppose PDAs will be as common to her as
calculators are to us.
* The internal memory appears to be divided into three drives, named
A, B, and SYS. A is just 100K of ROM, with an AUTOEXEC.BAT,
CONFIG.SYS, and a few other files. B is 350K of RAM converted to a
RAMDisk, and holds your documents. SYS must be the remainder of the
4 megs of ROM , and holds all the static GEOS stuff. Actually,
GEOS runs out of B:\GEOWORKS, with (I'm guessing) GEOS.INI entries
mapping read-only stuff in SYS: into B:. So if your browse B: with
the File Manager, you'll see all the mapped stuff from SYS with the
names underlined. You can manipulate files at will, and delete
(and create) folders and documents.
* If you select the "About" item from an app's File menu, you'll get
to see the Palm logo and hear a little bit of twangy Hawaiian
music. :-) Which means, by the way, that GEOS WAV sound drivers
should be working, since the sound bite is a WAV file.
I'd like to inaugurate the Zoomer Tips-n-Tricks list with this discovery:
FREEING UP MEMORY TAKEN BY STATE FILES
Each Zoomer app creates a state file that saves all pertinent
data for that app. When you return to the app, you are just where
your left off, thanks to the state file.
Unfortunately, some of these state files are *big*. Pocket Quicken,
for example, creates a 11K state file! If you start up all the apps
(and who won't when you get the thing for the first time!) you could
burn quite a bit of memory. My Zoomer, right now, has 80K of state
files!
To free up this space, use the file manager to move to
B:\GEOWORKS\PRIVDATA\STATE. Select and drag the state files of apps
you really don't care about to the wastebasket. Voila! Free space!
I'd suggest not killing state files of commonly used apps, since
they'll be recreated the next time you run the app. But, how
important is it to save a 10K forms calculator state file, just to
remember you were converting volume measurements?
All in all, I'm very happy with my Zoomer!
Chuck Musciano ARPA : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com
Harris Corporation Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck
PO Box 37, MS 16/1912 AT&T : (407) 727-6131
Melbourne, FL 32902 FAX : (407) 729-3363
A good newspaper is never good enough,
but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever. -- Garrison Keillor