Techie Toys

I'm a technophile, so I collect software, hardware, and various gadgets and gizmohickeses. What I don't have, I probably want. What I don't want I still like to hear about. Take a look at The Gadgeteer and Gizmodo for some cool gadget sites!

My desktop computer is an 800MHz (upgraded) blue and white Apple PowerMacintosh G3. I've got four monitors: three AOC 9Glr 19-inch 1600x1200 resolution CRTs and a 15" NEC flatpanel LCD. I started running Mac OS X in 2003 withversion 10.1.5. We held off for a while; the balance finally tipped for us when enough of our "must-have" apps went Carbon-native and there was a sufficiency of cool new apps available we wanted to play with. Oh yes... and enough third-parties had produced utilities to fill most of the gaps Apple left out when creating Mac OS X. See my recommendations for software for Mac OS X.

The PowerMac G3 is my 5th desktop Mac. I started with a Mac IIci, then moved to a Quadra 700, then the PowerMac 7100 then a beige G3 and now - ta da!. Each of the former machines, by the way, were excellent examples of hardware ease of use.

I'm very partial to the Macintosh. As I like to tell people: Unix is my favorite Operating System, the Mac is my favorite User Interface. (I don't use that "other Operating System"... the one from up in Redmond, WA.) So, we have a FreeBSD machine in the "machine room" and I have telnet (actually ssh) windows open to it much of the time. But my desktop environment is MacOS X. And in Mac OS X, I get the Mac USer Interface AND my favorite underlying OS in one nice package.

I also have a Palm OS-based Kyocera 7135. It's the latest (and lightest :-) of the various handheld computers I've had. See my recommendations for software for Palm OS.

First (early 1997) I tried Windows CE. I bought an HP 320LX. I liked it; it had a nice keyboard and some good software. But I hated needing to have a Windoze 95 machine around to back it up or install anything new! My trials and tribulations in figuring out how to interface it to the Macintosh got me an article in Handheld PC Magazine but that wasn't enough.

So I sold the WinCE box and bought a Newton (just after Apple killed the Newton project). I loved the Newton. I adored the Newton. Killing the Newton was the dumbest thing Steve Jobs has done since returning to Apple. Unfortunately, the Newton is a brick. It's about the size of a VHS cassette and weighs about 2 pounds. I wasn't carrying it with me. With great sadness, I realized I hadn't touched the Newton in several months and it wasn't getting the love it deserved. So, I sold the Newton. I regret doing that, but it was the right thing to do.

Just before Thanksgiving, 1998, I bought a Palm III. I didn't love it quite like the Newton but it was a terrific little box. And it was small enough to carry with me anywhere I go, which was a real plus.

In late 1999/early 2000 the Handspring Visor was announced and I was really interested in the Springboard technology. I bought a Visor Deluxe, then upgraded to the greyscale Visor Platinum, and finally to the color Visor Prism. I also bought a Visor Phone (cell phone attachment) to go with the Visor.

I loved my Visor. Unfortunately, Handspring moved into the mobile phone market and I don't much like the Treo. The VisorPhone was discontinued and my battery died... so I upgraded again.

Now I have a Kyocera PDA Phone. It's small - the smallest PDA I've had - but it has a surprisingly reasonable screen size. It's a clamshell style; I really like that. It weighs less than the Visor did. I keep it belted at my hip most of the time and hardly notice.

One of the nicest features of the Kyo is the integration between PDA and phone. For example, I have an app that checks the 5-day forecast at weather.com. I tell the app to update, it turns on the phone, contacts the server, gets the forecast, and hangs up. Just like that. Accessing the Web is just as painless. The Visorphone was never that smooth.

We've also got a pair of LG Electronics cellphones - one for each car. They're nice, simple, and small. No cameras. No fancy ringtones.

Have you seen the one that's about the size of a large pack of chewing gum? It's battery and buttons; that's all. It's also very expensive. Wait a few years...

We recently upgraded out digital camera to the Nikon Coolpix 2200. It's very sweet and rock solid. And tiny!

Our previous (and first) digital camera was a a Konica Q-mini that used compact-flash cards for "film". I liked it a lot and used it for many years but finally wanted something smaller, lighter, and easier to carry around. Now my Dad and Rich's Dad have the Q-mini's (we had two eventually) and we've got the Coolpix.