<10 years but On Topic

[John Allain]

I just got my first taste of the General Magic DataRover 840 
and man is it a fun machine!

Here's an intro although I believe that several designers 
may be on list to tell you more.
It's sort of like the first hard drive Mac simplified by half
and made pocket sized.  More Newton sized than Palm.
The screen is really high resolution for a pocket machine,
much better than Palm.  The O/S and apps have all the 
cleverness you might expect from Apple, but a little more
streamlined for quick use.  There's the pictoral desktop, a
hallway with file cabinets, etc.  great graphics all around.
Surprising this isn't used on all Cellphones at this point,
I believe it was attempted for some.

Hardware includes A Phone port for Voice, Fax, and Internet 
connectivity.  PCMCIA*2 ports. A form of IRDa, and a small 
port that may be a form of SCSI since there is a driver for that.

They're practically giving them away right now, even on eBay
so hence the mention.  This situation will definitely not be the 
same in 5 years.

I think it deserves inclusion here even though at 7 years (1998)
it's out of band formally, but due to to the severe Crash and burn 
of both the product, which couldn't fight both CE and Palm, and 
of the company (Internet bubbled?) it's becoming _ancient_ 
history real fast.  The sudden death of everything makes it difficult
to find outside information, accesories and so on Today, but what
you get is a great machine

Not SPAM, just happy with the find.

John A.

Keywords: DataRover 840, Magic Cap O/S, General Magic  Inc.