The Amstrad Pen Pad PDA 600 review - from Herald Sun, October 6, 1993
By Jason Romney
Even since the beginning of this year, the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) has evolved dramatically.
Regular Technologic readers will by now be familiar with the PDA concept following recent coverage of products such as the Apple Newton MessagePad, Sharp ExpertPad and Sharp IQ-9000 Organizer.
PDAs are wallet-sized computers, the best of which recognise your normal writing, either printed or cursive, when you use a pen on their screen.
The pen used is not a normal biro. PDAs have electronic ink that appears on the screen in response to pressure applied to the screen - a `pen'-like device is used because it fits comfortably in the hand and offers the best control for writing and drawing.
PDAs offer obvious advantages for anyone who needs to access and record information on the move. That means, for example, waiters who need to take orders in a restaurant, doctors who need to take notes in the wards of a hospital, parking or insurance inspectors, real estate agents and other sales people.
When 1993 began, Toshiba offered a pen-based computer called the T100X. This 1.5kg computer has a 9.5 inch screen and measures 269mm by 211mm deep and 38mm high. It fits easily in a briefcase and can be held in one hand while the user writes on the display with the other hand.
Its functions can be initiated with pen gestures drawn on-screen as editing and operational shortcuts. It has crude built-in hand writing recognition software to convert handwriting into type-written characters.
The T100X, with a 386SX microprocessor, 4Mb RAM and a 40Mb hard disk retailed for $6,080 (for information: 008 021 100).
But the mass consumer electronics market was demanding a much less expensive PDA with more user-friendly features.
Expected to cost about $1500, the Apple Newton MessagePad and Sharp ExpertPad are yet to appear on the Australian market in any volume but should offer the most sophisticated `intelligent' features of any PDA yet released.
The Newton MessagePad and Sharp ExpertPad are both expected to send and receive faxes and electronic mail, based on handwritten input and via in-built mobile phones (once such accessories become available).
Furthermore, they include an electronic `intelligent assistant' to automatically process entered data by `anticipating' the likely way in which information expressed in familiar, commonly used phrases will be relevant to the rest of your data.
When a PDA offers almost magical features such as these, its value is clear. Without such features, an electronic notebook is almost comically inferior to the traditional pencil and paper.
Which brings us to a Newton MessagePad and Sharp ExpertPad competitor, the Amstrad Pen Pad PDA 600, which has cleverly used the Sir Isaac Newton story (of the apple falling from the tree prompting the discovery of gravity), in its wide-spread advertising campaign.
Its lesser ($699) cost makes it superficially more attractive than the Apple offering, but is it really the same thing?
The computer world readily reflects the old adage about only getting what you pay for. For example, the more expensive Newton and ExpertPad recognise your handwriting no matter where you write on the screen.
Your writing can be moved around the screen, and flexibly juggled through the numerous `intelligent' tools that help get your life organised.
In contrast, the Pen Pad only accepts printed characters (not cursive script writing). And each letter must be carefully written into its own small box, 21 boxes of which are displayed at a time.
This is just one example of how the Amstrad Pen Pad is much less sophisticated than its Apple and Sharp competition.
True, its batteries last up to 40 hours, its memory (via PCMCIA cards) is expandable up to 2MB and it weighs less than 400 grams.
True also that it offers a search function, world time clock with multiple alarms, information transfer capability to and from PCs, metric-imperial conversion and the ability to accept drawings.
But without the critical in-built `intelligence' and communication powers of its more expensive competition, it is hardly more useful than the more modestly pitched Sharp IQ-9000.
Indeed, in many ways the smaller IQ-9000's software offers substantial advantages over the Pen Pad; although it doesn't offer handwriting recognition, information can be more flexibly manipulated and accessed.
It remains to be seen whether PDAs will really capture consumer imagination. I suspect that once their promise is realised and they are decked out with the full range of add-on bells and whistles, they will become essential (and taken-for-granted) tools of modern life.
In coming years you will likely be able to enter information orally. PDAs will transmit and receive moving color video pictures and sound.
But until that time, stick to the up-market PDAs and, at least by today's standards, your investment will be amply rewarded.