Nice story. I had an original Messagepad (patched, I assume) which was pretty much useless (it sucked a set of batteries dry in a few hours).
I used a Newton Messagepad 2000 for five years or so, and recorded meeting notes and contacts almost exclusively on it. (The 2.0 text recognition engine seemed to have been made for my handwriting.) It was a fantastic (but limited) device -- it ran for about a month on a set of alkalines, and actually had decent connectivity (it was one of the few devices that could print using IRDA). I had both the pretty horrible Newton SDK and even a native dev tool (NewtonBASIC) that I messed with from time to time (although it sucked compared to VB).
I used a Newton Messagepad 2000 for five years or so, and recorded meeting notes and contacts almost exclusively on it. (The 2.0 text recognition engine seemed to have been made for my handwriting.) It was a fantastic (but limited) device -- it ran for about a month on a set of alkalines, and actually had decent connectivity (it was one of the few devices that could print using IRDA). I had both the pretty horrible Newton SDK and even a native dev tool (NewtonBASIC) that I messed with from time to time (although it sucked compared to VB).