>
> I have a number of questions about Zoomer accessories. I'm trying to
> figure out which ones I actually need to buy so I'd thought I'd ask
> people who have been using their's for a while.
>
> Do I need an adapter?
> Judging by some of the comments, it appears that the Zoomer does not
> eat batteries the way I thought it would. I was under the impression
> that I would have the change the batteries every week or so but some
> one recently posted that they changed their batteries for the first
> time since February. What are people's experiences with an adapter
> like? Is it worth getting one? Is there any reason why I
> can't/shouldn't us a generic adapter?
>
I don't use an adapter. The power consumption on my Zoomer seems to be
directly related to the amount of times I transfer files to and from it.
I keep a log (in notebook) to keep a record of when I changed batteries.
I purchased my Zoomer in March and have changed the batteries on the
following dates: 4/30/95, 5/22/95, and 7/7/95. Over the past month, I
haven't done a lot of file transfers and it's still going strong. I
don't need an adapter, because I hate having my Zoomer tied to a cable.
(Ther serial cable is bad enough. Oh how I long for an IR Transceiver!)
> Should I get SRAM or Flash RAM? How much will I need?
> I know that SRAM is faster than Flash RAM and it needs its own battery
> but are the differences beyond that. Does the battery make SRAM
> harder to use? What about the stability of the data once the card is
> removed from the Zoomer. At this point, I don't think I'll need more
> that a couple of MB of memory. How accurate is this initial
> impression? I realize that it depends on how much I want to keep on
> the machine and how many apps I want to run but I just wanted to get
> an idea of how much memory others have added to their base machine.
>
I bought an ACE 2mb stacked SRAM card. This was supposed to be a 1mb
card with stacker yielding about 2mb of storage. After a long time of
great frustration, I deleted everything having to do with stacker on the
card and it remains a 1mb card. I have the Zoomer Text Editor, GeoCalc,
Tetris (From Ensemble), and a bunch of games from the Quick Shuffle card,
Graffiti, and all supporting apps. I have about 70k free. That doesn't
sound like much, believe it or not, you can store a LOT in that space.
(Especially if you use Graffiti for text entry and don't keep a lot of ink.)
> What should I use to connect to my desktop machine?
> I've heard two good suggestions on the list. One of them was to get
> the Palm Connect software and cable. The other was to get a PCMCIA
> drive on my desktop machine. How much does each option cost? I can
> see advantages and disadvantages of both methods.
>
I have Ensemble v2.01 installed and that works great for transfers. I
also use ZDOS for quick 'n dirty transfers. Ensemble is nice because I
can copy the whole directory structure fromthe Zoomer to the PC. It
takes a while, but it gives me a nice, clean backup.
> The Zoomers are being sold by three different companies under
> different names. I know that the accessories are interchangeable.
> But are the machines identical?
>
With the exception of the silk screaning on the cover, they are the same.
> I've had my Zoomer for a week now and I'm still having fun with it. I
> can't wait until the Geos SDK comes. Some of the information I've got
> from the zoomer-list has been very useful. It's nice to see that some
> people are just as fussy about being organized as I am.
>
PPPPTTHHH!!!! Me organized? HA! I just like gadgets and am a GEOS
junkie! Seriously, though, I just LOVE the fact that I can maintain an
auto-updating todo list in the date book. My biggest pet peeve about a
Day-Timer is that if an item carries over to the next day, you have to
re-copy it. I have a HUGE todo list, so that is only practical with a
PIM like datebook.
Regarding the SDK, I bought it about a year ago, and have yet to program
anything. The main reason is my lack of the Borland C compiler. I have
looked throught a LOT of the documentation, and it is FULL if cool
stuff. I can't wait for John Ferras to finish the new version of IZL.
That should give us some pretty cool apps.
> Thanks for the help.
>
No problem. Check out my home page. It points to the Geoworks home page
as well as to some Zoomer-related pages. Congrats on getting a Zoomer!
> Susan Sim ssim@vnet.ibm.com
> IBM Centre for Advanced Studies 21/894/844/TOR
> (416)-448-2668
>
> Green Party. Green beans. Bowling green. Green card.
> A big green raspberry to Cantor and Siegel.
>
-Jim
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James W. Barr, N9ONL | Tired of Windows? Get GeoPublish, the shareware
Buffalo Grove, IL, USA | version of Geoworks Ensemble at:
e-mail: jbarr@mcs.com | ftp://ftp.mcs.com/mcsnet.users/jbarr/GeoPublish
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Check out my WWW home page! http://www.mcs.net/~jbarr/home.html
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