The PT-9000 is much bigger than a Zoomer. It weighs in at 2.5 pounds
and has a 640 by 400 screen. The familiar cursor pad and A/B buttons
are gone, but there are 2 PCMCIA slots (1 Type II and 1 Type III), a full
size 9 pin serial port, a parallel port, a 3.5 floppy port, and a regular keyboard
port. It comes with 6Meg ROM and 2Meg Ram. The unit is powered by
six AA batteries, but there is a rechargable battery option. Average battery
life is about 22 hours (so I've heard).
When you turn on the machine, the first thing you notice is that it is
running a full windowed version of Geos. And it is fast, clocking
in at 16 Mhz. Response was snappy. The applications are slightly
different than on the Zoomer. Besides PalmAddress, PalmSchedule, PalmNotes etc.
there is also GeoWrite, GeoCalc and GeoFile. Plus the usual games..
Missing are all the cool little utilities like the Form Calculator and the
Language translator. Handwriting recognition was the same as a Zoomer.
One nice touch is that GeoHost for your PC comes with the unit and allows
you to transfer files via serial cable. Unfortunately my PC is running Windows95
and Geos doesn't run on it. I installed GeoHost on a 386 we had lying around
and it worked great.
My first impression is that the unit is too big and heavy to replace a PDA and
not powerful enough to replace a laptop. I was holding the unit playing Solitare
during a meeting (which is what I do with my Zoomer) and my wrists actually
began to hurt. Bad sign. It also suffers from the same screen problem the Zoomer
has, and that is a hard to read screen in low light conditions. I would have preferred
at least a backlight option, especially when it was plugged in on my desk.
My conclusion is that this would be a perfect machine for remote data entry and field
work that needed a pen interface. As a consumer unit I think it is destined to
fail. I think Sharp thinks this way also and that it why they only supply
vertical developers.
Regards, Mike Phillips