When the Newton came out, I jumped right on it. In my job, I had to keep little “books” in my pocket full of notes, settings, filters, instructions and such for various medical imaging I was doing. I had to be up to date and do it right every time, but sometimes you wouldn’t do something for several months, so I had thet little book I carried in my back pocket. When a setting had to be changed, out came that little black book, and eventually, it got so full and filled with cross-outs and things written in margins that I couldn’t find anything.
Right around that time, the Newton came out. I bought one immediately, and had a custom leather holster made for it. It was a good thing I wore a lab coat, because it would have been unbearably geeky to wear it around in the open!
I know others may have viewed it as a toy, or a useless/unreliable novelty, but it changed a lot of things for me. The Newton had what was called a “soup” memory, so as long as I tagged my notes with the right keywords, I could find things instantly!
At the time, that was unbelievable for me. I even got a little keyboard, and I took it to meetings. At that time, I was pretty much the only person who had something to take notes on in meetings, and people still remember that “little computer” I had.
I went through about four of them before the technology overtook it and Blackberries and those other small handheld things passed it by. But it recognized my handwriting (which was well suited to it as you can see from the post above)
I went to Palm Pilots, and went through a boatload of those, and it was not nearly as useful, even though it was more widely compatible.
I still have one of those old Newtons up in a cabinet...:)
I still have my two :-)