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Here are a few testimonials/comments/experiences from some of our users. Also, see Peter Rand's review of Newt's Cape 1.5. Note: I think I've collected these from public postings to newsgroups and NewtonTalk, but if I included your comments inappropriately, let me know and I'll remove or change. Or if you'd like me to add some...
From Peter Rand
One of the Newton's outstanding features is its built-in ability to read NewtonBooks. However, with the official cancellation of the Newton, it has become increasingly difficult to find a good selection of up-to-date ebooks in Newton format. Palm users, on the other hand, enjoy a growing number of freeware ebooks in PalmDOC format, and an increasing number of contemporary titles (at about $5 per ebook) are also being offered in PalmDOC format.
Steve Weyer has now added a plug-in to Newt's Cape that makes it possible to download PalmDOCs (in .pdb or .prc format) to the Newton and convert them automatically into NewtonBooks. For enthusiastic readers such as myself, this is an amazing development - suddenly thousands of new books that were "off-limits" to the Newton can now be read as any other NewtonBook!
Books in PalmDOC format can be found for example at: http://www.memoware.com. While ebooks in .prc and .pdb format can be downloaded directly to the Newton, ebooks in zip format need to be downloaded to a desktop, unzipped, and then emailed to a Newton running SimpleMail version 4.0. Newt's Cape can then load the .prc or .pdb attachment from the Inbox.
Contempory ebooks can be purchased at http://www.memoware.com/mw-books.htm for about $5 per title. Select a book in .prc format, provide your credit card number over the secure server, and then download the ebook to your desktop in zip format. Unzip the book and email it to your Newton as described above. I just bought and downloaded my first-ever commercial ebook, and Newt's Cape is now converting it to a NewtonBook....... it works! I now look forward to reading this and other contemporary novels on my Newton.
From Bennett(?) on smaller.com
I recently switched from using Luna Suite to Newtscape and Simple Mail. There was talk earlier about the problems with Lunasuite. I couldn't seem to get it to work reliably so I switched. I wanted to tell you guys how pleased I was with both Simple Mail and Newtscape. I am using Newtscape right now. It never drops the connection and rarely gives me that 1001 (or whatever it is) error. Not only that, but without touching my NIE connection, all of a sudden I canr reliably surf the net and get my email from my cell phone (don't ask me why, but it works 100% of the time now.) The scheduling feature on Newtscape also has worked right each time. I have scheduled my newton to go onto the internet at 5:50 am and download the local and national newspaper (in Canada). I read it offline sometime during the day. I just wanted to say two thumbs up... way up, for both simple mail and Newtscape."
From Gary Moody:
I can personally attest (as can many other people on the [NewtonTalk] list) that Newt's Cape is an awesome browser...and bookmaker!
It is well worth the shareware fee. In fact, the fee is a pittance for the functionality this package brings to your Newton. AND, Steve (yes, it's a Steve Weyer product) continues to make it better and better, with tons of examples buried in his website. LunaSuite wasn't thoroughly debugged before the terminal release, and neither it nor NetHopper is currently being developed or supported.
When you first use it, it does feel a little cumbersome due to the interface and the plethora of potential options. Read the manual, try the software, read the manual again, and work on the features you use every day. After a while, it is a joy to use and you keep finding new stuff in it to incorporate. This browser is also the only Newton browser that supports Hemlock, the Newton version of the Mac Sherlock Search utility...too cool!
Get it, you'll like it!
From M Rollins
NewtsCape - In my opinion, the best Newton app. A full featured WWW browser, supports .GIF and .JPG files, tables, cookies. Can save a web page as a Newton book. Can read and save Palm .DOC format e-texts. Worth the money.
From Marc van Maastricht:
I can tell you something about the three of them [Newton browsers], because I've tried them all for quite a while.
Right now I'm using Newt's Cape and I'm very content with it.
In the beginning I used NetHopper, but it doesn't support too many website layouts.
After that I used LunaSuite. That's a beautiful product but, alas, it's simply not finished and they will not finish it either. On my MP2100 it was as buggy as hell, probably because it's not finished. Also LunaSuite installs a lot of non-standard stationaries that caused other programs to function badly as well. Besides a lot of functions simply don't work (meant for future versions). For example, you can't print an email message from within the inbox. Also, a lot of times it isn't possible to file an email message to Notes or Works, and if it's possible it uses the same stationary as the inbox, which means that you can't print it either and can't even change the text or copy it or whatever. The ftp-client part of LunaSuite is beautiful, but not finished either: The main reason of existence of the ftp-part doesn't work: The downloaded packages are always corrupted and therefore it's not possible to install the downloaded packages! So, although LunaSuite have (had) a lot of potential, it didn't work for me. Besides, it takes a lot of heap and memory, especially regarding some parts that aren't functioning, while you're not able to de-install this parts, because it's one huge package.
Another drawback is that both programs, NetHopper and LunaSuite, aren't supported anymore.
I'm using Newt's Cape instead and I've paid the fee for it, still without ONE minute regretting it! I love the possibility to make Newton books from websites and other information. The way to set your preferences is really sophisticated: You need to get used to it but after that, you can really make Newt's Cape working like you want! You also need to get used to the different user interface, but once you're used to it, it's fine. On my MP2100, Newt's Cape is very stable and seldom I get error messages, and if I get them, quitting Newt's Cape and restart it again, usually solves the problem. Newt's Cape handles GIF as well as JPG pictures and everything, including links and other information is saved after you've made a Newton book. And probably one of the biggest advantages is that it works flawlessly and very integrated with SimpleMail, a free and flexible e-mail program (http://ds.dial.pipex.com/simple). The biggest advantages of SimpleMail are that it's small and fast and it handles attachments very flexible: It downloads instead of skipping them, even if there's no stationary available. This allows Newt's Cape to handle them. (Of course you can prevent downloading these attachments by filtering them by size). If you've installed SimpleMail and Newt's Cape, you get a variety of extra option in the Routing envelop of the Inbox. If you highlight a link in the inbox, you can choose between "Open in Newt's Cape" (immediately) or add it to the bookmarks in Newt's Cape. You can then retrieve this links later and fully automatic by an integrated schedule function within Newt's Cape. The latest version also allows multi-level scheduling. The scheduling option is especially handy, because more and more websites have a Palm version of their site, which are usually especially made for (multi-level) scheduling.
Another beautiful (and until recently undocumented) option is, that you can receive pictures (GIF and JPEG) and html documents by e-mail using SimpleMail with Newt's Cape installed! With LunaSuite that's possible too, but if you really want that, then there's no need to stick with LunaSuite anymore. If you've received an e-mail with a picture attached, then you need to go to that attachment. SimpleMail says that there's no stationary installed for that attachment, but ignoring that and just tapping the routing-envelop shows: "Newt's Cape: Open". And... The picture appears in Newt's Cape! The same option appears automatically if you've received an html-version of an e-mail, like e-zines. These nice extra options for your inbox, do not appear with the mail program Enroute Inet, which was one of the reasons I dropped Enroute (a good e-mail application). Another nice thing of Newt's Cape is, that it supports plug-ins. The JPEG-reader, for example, is a plug-in. There are also plug-ins for different languages and font-types (like French/Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.). The advantage is that you can drop plug-ins (functions) you don't need.
There is also a plug-in that is responsible for the recognition of URLs. This plug-in gives not only your inbox the ability to open an URL in Newt's Cape or add it to bookmarks, it makes it also possible in Notes, Works and some other third-party products, like PaperBack. Besides, it gives the extra option to save a Note or a Works document in Html-format. This allows you to add styles (Bold, Italic, Large, etc.) to your e-mails, in a very easy way, especially if you use the (free) tool called nHTML (http://www.tow.com). You can also make you own Newton books easily by typing your text, saving it as Html, open it in Newt's Cape and save it as a package. In the same way you can download different webpages, save them to NewtWorks (or Notes) and eventually make one Newton book of them. You can even make special Newton scripts in Html-code that works like a program and can be executed by Newt's Cape. That allows a lot possibilities to make web browsing on the Newton more fun. There are already several scripts. One of them is a "map maker", a script that uses the website from MapBlast! and allows you to make a Newton book with a map of a big part of the world, including city-maps. The script makes such a map fully automatically and therefore faster then a desktop browser!
There surely are a lot more option that I've forgotten, but you understand that I'm quite enthusiastic about Newt's Cape (and even more in combination with other applications).
And, after all, probably the most important thing is that Newt's Cape (and Simple Mail) are both still actively supported! Steve Weyer (the maker of Newt's Cape indeed) usually answered my questions or suggestions within one or two days. He even included a new schedule option ('monthly') in the latest version, two weeks after I asked for it!
From Gary Witscher:
I use Newt's Cape. I've tried NetHopper and I agree with you, it makes browsing unnecessarily difficult. Many posts here will praise LunaSuite but the several times that I've tried it, it has utterly failed to even do the basics. Both NetHopper (>400K) and LunaSuite are large by Newton standards. Neither employ the Newton's object orientated structure, instead they attempt to emulate the desktop format.
Newt's Cape (<200K) is a Newton orientated application thru and thru. It can import and export HTML from the In/Out Box, Notes, NewtWorks, and your desktop computer. It can create stand alone Newton books from a loaded Web page or your own HTML document. It supports MacIntalk and email. Although it won't display frames it does allow you to view them as individual Web pages.
You can load gifs all at once, not all all, or one at a time. Any link can be saved as a bookmark with a simple Newton gesture. The user interface is so completely customizable that you will find yourself discovering new details for month after month. For example, you could have a Chinese interface or you could make Newt's Cape appear user invisible. This is the power of the Newton, and it is the realm of Newt's Cape.
Newt's Cape is currently and continually being developed. Visit the Newt's Cape web page, contact the author and listen to its many satisfied users. Use your Newton as it was intended to he used.
In its default configuration Newt's Cape is simpler to learn then any other browser (I assume that is your intended use). It utilizes the built in Newton Book format, and could be set up to appear to be nothing more than a Newton Book with a couple of bonus features. I use it every day. I've loaded 100k+ pages and surfed for more than four straight hours without crashing my Newton 2100. Start simple.
From Tim Swan:
I'm a registered user of Newt's Cape and, although I'm also an owner of Nethopper and Lunasuite, I just keep coming back to it. I love being able to go to pages and save them as packages for reading (during boring meetings, usually.) However, it's not the quickest browser nor is the interface particularly well integrated. Another however, it's stable, full-featured (although I'd LOVE to be able to view JPEG's) [note: added in 2.0], the price is right, and Steve's the most committed Newton developer I've seen (well, Hardy Macia's right up there.) I'd recommend Newt's Cape highly.
From Kenny Song:
I was one of those that eagerly requested for the JPEG plug-in for NetHopper (NH). Well, I am now a very happy registered Newt's Cape (NC) user. You HAVE to be a registered user to really appreciate the amount of attention and work Steve is putting into NC. And he REALLY is responsive to user request.
Give NC another look and if you liked Net Hopper like I did, go to options in NC and set 'Ignore Tables' to Yes and 'Images Scale to Fit' and your pages will look very much like NH's.
From there, take your time to discover its many features. It's bookmarking methods, simple scheduling, connecting to the web or bookmarking from Notes, Works or In/Out Box. Unlike NH, NC's Cache has different storage for Image/HTML pages. Or if you really like a page, create a Newtonbook complete with Chapters/Index/Images at the tap of a button!
And I love Hemlock that works just like Mac OS 8.5's Sherlock. Registered users get this feature. Key in any word, eg. DVD or X-Files and you'll be presented with hundreds of websites from popular search engines where you can download, bookmark or read a brief site description right from Hemlock. Awesome.
Ever since NC, I have spend less time browsing on my Powerbook. NC is fast and I can download all my favourite sites to cache and view them offline at my leisure. IMHO this is definitely THE software that have opened up the WORLD to my Newton in a most elegant manner.
From Andrew Maier
I just want to tell you how well and stable NC works. You all probably know, but I still find it astonishing.
I am interested in buying a CD-R and so I looked around for information and found the CD-Recodable FAQ from the comp.publish.cdrom.* newsgroups.
A html file with 378927 bytes in size. I downloaded to the Newton (via NIE) and set to save the file as package instead of displaying it. It went through in one go saved as a 499kB package without any problems. It was after NC was finished that I dicovered that the internet connection was still up, so I did not use the most heap saving environment either. WOW!!!
From Peter Rand
I wanted to tell why Ithink I am such a fanatic with regard to Newt's Cape:
I love to read. I devour incredible numbers of books, articles, magazines, you name it. My mom is a librarian, and from as early as I can remember, I also had access to stacks and stacks of books. While I was at university, the head librarian noticed I spent a lot of time in the library, and he actually gave me my own private study area directly in the library. In the summers, or whenever I had any free time, I would go spend the day at the local library - reading newspapers, magazines, reviews, you name it. It never made sense for me to buy a magazine, since I could usually read the whole thing in 10 or 15 minutes.
I also love the quiet of public libraries. It's one of the few places I can think. When I studied for the bar exam in '87, I spent each day at a different public library. So for 28 years I was addicted to the wealth of information provided by the U.S. public library system.
Then I moved to Austria to work. Guess what - they don't really have a public-library system here. That's the biggest thing I miss about America - the good public libraries. (Here a "library" is open about 6 hours a week, has no resource materials or equipment, and carries only 20-year old paperback copies of Agatha Christie - in German).
I hated it. There was nothing for me to read. No recent books, no magazines, and no chance to do any research, either. I bought an Encyclopedia Brittannica and spent many evenings ploughing through it. But I really missed not being able to keep up with recent events. I bought a shortwave radio, which helped, but it just wasn't the same.
Then I discovered Newton, the Internet and Newt's Cape! For the first time in 10 years, I now had the ability to browse newspapers, read magazines and do research on topics of interest to me. A whole new world opened to me, and I was able to pursue an interest which had been denied me for 10 years. I can't tell you how excited I was (and am) about the quick access I now have to documents all over the world.
At first Newt's Cape 1.5 was too slow for me - I wanted to read so many documents that Newt's Cape couldn't keep up. That's why I pushed a bit for the checkbox (overview) system - so I could manage multiple HTML and Image cache items without have to load and delete everything "by hand". It took ages, for example, to delete 10 images prior to the checkbox system. Now everything is so quick and easy....
Newt's Cape 2.0 now works extremely well for my purposes. I can "scoop up" dozens of articles at once, and automatically process them. When I'm finished, I simple tap "all" and then delete the articles. I can't tell you how important this is too me. (I probably use Newt's Cape two to four hours per day - I use it more than all my other Newton programs put together).
Now that I have Newt's Cape to satisfy my urge to read and keep up with world events, I no longer feel so homesick for the libraries in the U.S.
So I guess in a way, Newt's Cape is the bridge, or mental lifeline, that connects me to America while I am living here in Europe.
Hope that explains why I like the program so much.
From Peter Rand
I was evaluating a pre-release version of Newt's Cape 2.0 when a friend called and asked if I could send him some articles about the Starr report on Clinton from the Internet. That seemed like a good excuse to try out some of the new features in Newt's Cape 2.0, so I fired up the program and ...
I went into bookmarks, marked the URL checkboxes for all the International Herald Tribune sections, the Yahoo News Summary, and the Opinions / Local News/ Editorials /and Politics sections of the Washington Post. I then tapped "routing button/schedule/immediate" and waited while everything downloaded from the Internet.
Everything loaded quickly and smoothly. I then viewed the HTML items one by one in the Newt's Cape viewer as temporary NewtonBooks, and if I saw a reference to an interesting article I made a "horizontal gesture (tap & drag)" over the link, tapped "Display URL" and then "Bookmarks/Add Bookmark". I did this for about 20 different articles in length from 10k to 25k.
After that I went to bookmarks/unfiled and marked the checkboxes for these 20+ articles, and tapped "Process/Save to NewtWorks" to load the articles directly to NewtWorks.
Everything was saved to NewtWorks directly from the Internet without any errors (20+ URLs!).
I then went to NewtWorks, marked the checkboxes for all the articles, and sent them to my OutBox. I opened the OutBox, and sent all the items off to my friend. (I doubt if he expected _so_ much information ;-) ) Everything worked flawlessly.
Before I logged off, I checked NewtonMAD and DNUG to see if any interesting new software came up this week.
I then did a final check of my mail and logged off.
I was absolutely amazed! Remembering that "network communications are inherently unpredictable" I searched and downloaded an amazing volume of data, processed it in four different applications (Newt's Cape, NewtWorks, InBox and SimpleMail) and was able to pass it on in one go to a third party. Newt's Cape was very stable, there were no hang-ups, and I found and processed all the information I wanted. All the new automatic batch/process features make the program a real pleasure to use.
This is really one powerful little package! I hope the above gives you a sense of how the program can be used.
From Peter Rand
The current debate over NewtonPress underlines an important point: one of the truly great (and underutilized) things about the Newton is its ability to read and create NewtonBooks. I've read numerous novels on the Newton, and always pack the Newton full of NewtonBooks before I take off on vacation. I only wish more books were available! ("Nerds" by Nat Henderson is great, by the way).
It would be great if more people got involved in creating books and sharing them with the Newton community. Send a copy of your books to NewtonMAD for posting!
I haven't used NewtonPress (I have the CD, but no CD drive), but I have used Paperback, which is an extremely simple way to create a book (click, click, done). Recently I've been using Newt's Cape as a bookmaker, and like it very much, since it gives one total control over ever aspect of the book - images, links, fonts, collapsible headings and book format can all be easily customized.
Here's a brief summary of how a book is created with Newt's Cape.
NewtonMAD has posted the help book I made for Newt's Cape - in addition, I think Simon Bell's site also has a help book I made for SimpleMail 3.1. Both of these books were created using Newt's Cape. I had absolutely no experience with or knowledge of HTML before I made these books.
Creating books is a lot of fun, and I hope to create more in the future. Lately I've been checking out the Gutenberg Project for some good source text...
From Peter Rand
I'm actually surprised that anybody uses a desktop to collect news articles for the Newton, since the Newton is perfect for gathering information all on its own.
As a news junkie, I probably spend at least an hour a day reading various news sources.
One quick and easy method of getting news is to sign up for free email delivery from news organizations like CNN, the Christian Science Monitor and Morrock News Service. When I collect my email in the morning, I automatically have world news summaries waiting for me in my mailbox. Some of the articles also contain URLs for in-depth reports - when I see an interesting URL, I just highlight it and save it as a bookmark in Newt's Cape (I can then download all these selected articles at one fell swoop with Newt's Cape using the batch loading feature).
I also have the URLs of all major new organizations stored in Newt's Cape. If I need a dose of news I just start Newt's Cape, open bookmarks, check all the URL's I want, and plug in to the phone. I can load numerous articles in no time in this way. Some sites, like BBC, have small JPEGs (about 8k) which accompany their articles, and I can activate these images and enjoy seeing the photos which go along with the news articles.
Steve Weyer has recently [2.0s-2] added some functions to Newt's Cape which are a godsend to people like me who like to trawl the Internet for information: he's added an AutoLink function that downloads all the links on a web-page. Thus when I downloaded the front page of the Washington Post this morning, Newt's Cape automatically downloaded all the articles mentioned on the front page (about 30, I think). If I'd rather not grab every link, I can always open the web-page, do a "View/Load links...", and Newt's Cape provides me with an overview of all available articles. I can then check the articles I want and just download them (or add the URLs to bookmarks for later retrieval).
The other function which is really neat is a new "View/Newer HTML Cache Item" feature. If I've got 30 articles stored in cache, I can open one article and then simply scroll through the next newest articles without having to open cache and manually select the next article to read. This really makes it easy to quickly view numerous articles with a minimum of hassle.
Once an item is stored in cache in Newt's Cape, I can process it to my heart's desire. I can save it as a package (to preserve images), forward certain pages to friends via email (which I frequently do), or transfer the article to NewtWorks to do some editing. The brilliant thing about Newt's Cape is that you can do all this manually, or select several items and have Newt's Cape process them all automatically.
I've got Netscape on my desktop at work, and a super fast connection, but for in-depth reading and automatic retrieval of multiple web-pages, Newt's Cape is much better than its desktop namesake.
Plus, I can even use Newt's Cape to access my HotMail account at work when I'm not in the office. Now that's flexibility!
From Michael Friedman
(from discussion of email and browser clients) On Web browsers, I have a full-fledged rant available if you want to hear it, but the gist is that LunaSuite's web browser annoys me because of the way it renders tables and graphics, and it still has some major (IMO) bugs. I recently switched to Newt's Cape, because it can render tables and even show frames (well-enough) and you can change the identifier string so web sites think it's Netscape. (Many of the newer, flashier, and IMO worse-designed web sites have "browser-specific" content. If you don't have either Netscape or IE, they just give you a page saying "we don't support you." :( )
So my opinion, after trying out EnRoute, SimpleMail, Eudora and NetHopper, Newt's Cape, LunaSuite is that for my needs, EnRoute and Newt's Cape are the best.
From Kenny Song
(from discussion of email and browser clients) IMHO, SimpleMail and NewtsCape is best. Maybe because it's what I've settled with. I also used Enroute and NetHopper with WebXpress for a long while. I tried LunaSuite and decided against it for 2 reasons. Too big and no longer supported (even though it's now free).
Newtscape? WebXpress became obsolete with it since scheduled download is built in. There's so much to like about NC. It has superior Bookmarking which can be user named, you can do batch downloads for offline viewing, you can configure the look of your page (tables, frame, fonts, greyscale levels etc), you can select to do batch download of all links and image from a generated list of urls from current page, you can read html emails from In/Out Box or html documents in Notes or Works, you can export webpages as a Newton Book (with live links), as html in Notes and Works or as a word processing file in Works. You can ever bring Mac OS 8.5's Sherlock search feature into your Newton via Sean Luke's excellent Hemlock which ONLY works with NC. I know I miss out on other features like its scripting abilities since I'm not a real power user.
But perhaps the best reason is its developer, Steve Weyer, who is active on this [NewtonTalk] list and very responsive to user feedback (Thanks Steve for sponsoring this list).
From Camillus Guhl
It is now my choice for WWW on the Newton. Goes beyond the mere viewing of Webpages: Newtscape allows to transfer pages as Document or Source to Notes or Works and work/view with them at any time! Very Newtonlike application. Offers much more features (Frames! Tables! HTTP Header!) than Nethopper 3.2 without having to carry around the unecessarily overloaded Lunasuite. I like the cache functions for both HTML and Images. Manage your Bookmarks! Registered Version allows to save a Webpage as Newton Book. Cool! Steve Weyer did more than a good job to the Newton Community with that fine *small* application! Development continues.
From Sean Luke
Newt's Cape is a web browser which displays its HTML by first converting it to a temporary newton book, then displaying the book using the Newton's internal book reader. This is why Newt's Cape is so small: it doesn't need a custom drawing engine. It also makes Newt's Cape very flexible, able to save HTML out to permanent books, etc. But because it goes through the HTML -> NewtonBook conversion process, Newt's Cape is somewhat slower than NetHopper (I'd say it's the same speed in loading, but about 60% the speed in drawing)
Newt's Cape supports a ton of stuff given its tiny size:
Stuff Newt's Cape doesn't support:
There are some problems with Newt's Cape; the bleeding edge versions especially have had some serious hanging problems on my MP2K. But otherwise, it's a great product well worth the $30 [for students; $35 for others]
From Jeremy Bond Shepherd
Newt's Cape is a really terrific program, and IMHO the best Newton browser available. I had avoided buying Newt's Cape until a few months ago because the interface didn't feel right to me. However, the U/I has improved dramatically in recent releases, and it now feels almost as "comfortable" to use as Nethopper did, albeit with much greater flexibility and functionality. The few remaining requests I have for the U/I are probably not possible within the Newton Book framework that Newt's Cape operates in.
One really great thing is that Steve Weyer listens to his users and always seems to be doing his best to meet requests where possible. (JPEG support! Woo hoo!)
The table and frame functionality is fine 90% of the time. The only problem I have is when the page specifies narrow table column widths and the browser has to wrap column text every 4 or 5 characters. The "frame substitute" processing works just fine for most framed pages.
Scheduled browsing seems to be OK. I haven't been able to get it to work for me, but it is a new feature, and might still have a few kinks in it. I have no doubt it will be working flawlessly before long.
SSL is a pipe dream. I would love to be able to check my bank account and pay my Amex bill from my Newton. However, I have read the specs for SSL and it looks quite complicated. I would be delighted to see it, but I'm not holding my breath.
From Stephan Reitzner
Newt's Cape is one of the best things my MP2000 ever saw. This software is excellent. The features are very good, the speed is good and the developer still invests a lot of effort enhancing the product. BTW: Steve Weyer is one of the best Newton Hackers I know. Brilliant ideas and good (perforamnt) solutions.
No, I am not one of his staff members nor am I related to him in any way. I just love this product.
My name is Richard Parker, and I just recently (a few days ago) registered NewtsCape v1.2 via Kagi Software. The short of it is that I am *absolutely* impressed by your product!
The long of it: I registered NewtsCape, got the key for the beta version that supports NIE (I am a Newton developer, and received the prerelease version of NIE from Apple), and installed it on my MP130. As a side note, NIE was extremely simple to install and configure, and worked perfectly the first time.
Back to the main thread: NewtsCape was also trivial to install, and required no configuration in order to work perfectly the first time. I was able to create a small home page with tables and several "important" links (such as Dilbert), type in the URL into NewtsCape, and view it within seconds! As an encore, I saved the home page as a Newton Book (the absolute most impressive feature, in my opinion), so now all of my links are *two taps* away! When selected (as I am sure that you already know), NewtsCape and NIE both launch automatically, establish the connection, and retrieve the HTML page. Sheer bliss!
I think that the only downside to NewtsCape is that it doesn't LOUDLY PROCLAIM its extraordinary features, tight integration with the rest of the Newton's functionality (such as email and bookreader), and amazingly simple installation and usage! Everyone should have this product.
Thanks again for your support of the small but devoted Newton community. I am happy to cast my monetary vote of support with you. Keep up the great work!
Richard,
you forget to mention the PACKAGE-DOWNLOAD-Feature of Newtscape...
Its absolutely great to install Packages via WWW.
I hope that more people will place their programm as pkg-files on the web.
Maybe Steve should talk with some people from AMUG or NANUG.
I think they must have enough space for such an area on their BBS-IN-A-BOX.
The rest :
Install - no problems
Surfing - great , tested 3-4 hours without any problem
Congratulation to Steve and Greg !!!
Everybody with an MP120/130 should have register N(i)ewtscape !!!
CU,
Christian
On May 28, the BC election was covered by BCTV. The election was very close and the call for a NDP majority came only late in the evening. The BCTV team responsible for the statistical components of the coverage and the "calls" was headed by D.F. Andrews who, to careful viewers, was seen in the background using a Newton on which prior and incoming data was stored. The Newton supplemented the data flowing in through a configuation of larger machines.
Newt's Cape was used to provide efficient access to data on the Newton during the coverage. Because the election was close, the speedy access to information was highly valued.
An article "Sentient Computing" in GPS World, Sept 1998 describes a project at the Computing Laboratory at University of Kent at Canterbury for context-aware mobile computing in ecological and archaeological fieldwork; it features Newt's Cape to get location from a GPS for a photograph recording form.
Newt's Cape was recently (15 May 1998) awarded a 5 Cow Rating by PDA Central
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