On to Kupitero's obsolete computers/gadgets...(please note that these are all actual pictures)!

First-generation iMac (Bondi-Blue):

Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 and went on the form Next, Inc and made Pixar a household name. But his heart remained at Apple. When he returned in 1997, he took off where he left at Apple - creating and developing the Macs. Since, it was the decade of the Internet, in 1998, he released the iMac (internet Mac). This baby was it.

It is powered by a Motorola PowerPC chip at 233mhz (the G3), 32 MB of RAM (upgraded since to 256 MB via two 128 MB SODIMM DRAMs), 4GB of hard drive - now the IDE variety- (upgraded to 60GB), a 15" multi-scan color monitor, a 24x tray-loading CD-ROM drive, two USB ports, 100 Mbps Ethernet as well as a 56K modem - all built-in and well, NO floppy drive! Although this computer can now be also considered an "antique", it still runs the latest and greatest (as of Oct. 2003) OS from Apple - Mac OS X Panther (10.3)!

The Palm VII:

From computers to handhelds. My first PDA was the Casio PV-100, because the first Palm handhelds available then, were very expensive for a poor boy like this author. However, by 1995, Palm became the dominant handheld maker after most of the pioneers in the field like the Apple Newton, General Magic (Magic Cap was their OS) and Magic Cap OS-compatibles like Sony's Magic Link and Motorola's Envoy folded up. Palm's brilliant Graffiti hand-writing recognition software blew the competition away.

The Palm VII series (VII and VIIx) were the first Palm handhelds that incorporated a radio transceiver. These handhelds can be recognized by their unique antennas cleverly concealed alongside the stylus on the right side of the units.

By simply raising the antenna - as seen in first pic of the Palm VII here - and, with a subscription to the Palm.Net network (it's still active), users can access their e-mails, and literally, surf the Internet - wirelessly - via Palm's unique Web-clipping applications (see pic 2). Nowadays, with the proliferation of free WiFi access and the integration of phones into handhelds, Palm (now called, PalmOne), is now re-focusing its strategy towards that direction.

NOTE: Due to the popularity of WiFi, PalmOne discontinued their Palm.Net service which took effect end of August 2004. This action left users of the Palm VII series and i705 handhelds unable to use ther PQA (web-clipping apps) as well as the WAP browser. A small ISP might be willing to take up this slack for these Palm users.

Treo 270 PDA/Phone (GSM) by Handspring:

Handspring was the first company to directly compete with Palm in the PDA market in the late 90s. It offered more hardware via it's unique Springboard module slot - which was actually, just a Compact Flash (CF) card slot. They came out with the first phone Springboard module in 1998 called the Visor Phone, which gave rise to the integration of the first PDA/phone device. In 2001, they released the first truly, integrated PDA/phone with a built-in keyboard, the Treo 180 (the Treo 180g did not have keyboard - its used Grafitti for data input).

With that head start in technology , they released the Motorola-powered (Dragonball VZ -MC68VZ328VF) Treo 270 (my pics above), which was the GSM-variant of the Treo 300 -- it used the CDMA network (which is still very popular in the U.S.), in late 2002. The Treo 180 and the Treo 270 share the same physical characteristics except that the former was a gray-scale release while the latter came in a bright color STN backlit display with over 4,000 colors.

And, once more, by the end of 2003, PalmOne (after they acquired Handspring) upped the ante in the "smartphone" wars by releasing the much-sought after, Treo 600 as well as the redesigned version, the Treo 650 in late 2004. It was in mid 2003 that Handspring, the company, was bought-out by Palm - which in turn, was split into separate software and hardware entities - PalmSource and PalmOne, respectively.

|back to Main Gadgets||next|

|back to Top|

All trademarks and brands mentioned here are the registered trademarks of their respective owners.