Newton eMate 300
Submitted by Tom Owad on January 27, 2004 - 3:17pm.
Apple | Computers | Newton
The eMate 300 was the first and only Newton designed in notebook form. Thinking they were building the ideal educational laptop, the Newton team actually ended up building the ideal laptop, period. What educators wanted was cool looking, rugged computers. But who doesn't want their computers to be cool looking and rugged? Apple, with all its marketing brilliance of the period, decided to limit sales to the educational market.
The eMate 300 shipped with a 25 MHz ARM 710a RISC processor, 3 MB RAM and 8 MB ROM. NewtonOS 2.1 (that's the one with the handwriting recognition that actually works), the standard Newton address book and calendar, and NewtonWorks: a word processor, drawing program, spreadsheet, and graphing calculator are included and even burnt into ROM, so you needn't worry in the least about deleting them.
The eMate 300 had the great misfortune of being born during Apple's greatest financial difficulties. As a result of Steve Jobs' desire to bring focus to Apple, the entire Newton division got the axe, which is truly regrettable, as the Newtons were just finally getting really good.
Though several years old now, the eMate 300 remains as useful as ever and has yet to be replaced by a comparable product. For those looking for a small, portable, rugged, word processor with exceptional battery life, the eMate 300 remains the way to go. A USB to serial adapter is all it takes to make the eMate work with the latest Apple hardware.