[159] in bcs-newton
Also needs to reset, but not that bad...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Albert P. Dul)
Wed Aug 11 17:32:47 1993
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 08:42:39 -0500
From: aldul@nexus.com (Albert P. Dul)
To: bcs-newton@world.std.com
Cc: aldul@bermuda.nexus.com
>My MessagePad stopped recognizing my handwriting. Plain and simple. I have
>not used the into PCMCIA card since Sunday, and many a dazzling technology
>demo has been done since then.
>
>This morning, nothing. Sometimes the handwritten word would just disappear,
>other times it would meekly straighten out , like it was being treated as
>a graphic (that recognition was not turned on).
>
>Anyone else notice this in a 1.02 OS Message Pad? I thought that I would be
>isolated from this, thinking I had a "newer" model. Also, anyone having a
>tough time writing down the topic for a meeting in the calendar area? This
>gives me fits at times.
>
> Dave Harrison
I too had this problem after several days of use. I also have the 1.02 OS. My
guess is that the OS probably needed about 1 more week of work but would have
delayed the introduction, which would have cost dearly. I'm also assuming they
know about this and are working on a way to release a patch while newer units
hopefully will contain a correction (hope, hope, hope) :). Since this problem
appears over time, it's not the easiest bug to catch (i.e. it's not a "Do this
and it crashes" thing). Maybe it's a memory leak, or objects are being
allocated but not freed, or buffer space for recognotion fills up with garbage
and theres no room to work. Hmmm...
Anyway, I beamed all my Newton's contents into another unit for backup and hit
the reset button. It did NOT erase everything I had enterd into the machine.
Also, the recognizers seemed to perk up. If reset fixes the recognizers and
doesn't zap the content, I have no problem resetting once a week till a fix is
available. Does anybody know exactly what the reset button does, anyway?
Lastly, when it's all working, it really is the greatest thing I've ever seen,
and it's actually useful too. Having the to do list roll over each day is
saving piles of post-its already. The ever present note dated "Fri 1/1" is
great for jotting things down on the fly. I turn off recognition and just use
the screen as a piece of paper. The 8 month calendar at a glance is also
great.
Apple, fix that recognizer!
Al Dul
FinTech
