Atari Portfolio - Terminator 2

This was a great machine. They even used it in the movie Terminator 2. Of course you can't do what that kid did in the movie but it had other great features. It was really hard not to love.

It had a great clear display that although wasn't backlit, it was incredibly readable. It was also very retro since it was a dot matrix screen with low 40x25 character resolution.

It had great apps from a simple word processor, database and spreadsheet. On today's high capacity AA batteries it could run for a good few hours. If you bought the media card you can put your mind to rest that your data won't be lost when you changed the batteries.

It was just so usable. The only thing is, it's not particiaurly practical today. It's too big to fit in a pocket and too small to type easily with the keyboard. But I would definitely keep one just to use it as an address book, perform small calcuations, all in a very sparse and clean user interface. It was refreshing that it had none of the obtrusive and colorful graphical user interface which get bogged down with menus or interfaces that look like windows 3.0. Yes, you can install a widget or a utilty on the desktop/notebook but I really don't like the whole mouse and keyboard interface.

To be honest, I still don't know why today's colorful interfaces triunmph over text interfaces. Do you really put pictures of people in your phone address book? I know accessing the internet on a pda is a great and cool idea, but then again, it's a terrible experience in my opinion.

CD and Digital Music - The End?

Music in the old days were fun. You buy the CD with great cover art / inlays / photos of your favorite artist and get a rack to store your collection, buy your favorite cool looking stereo player. It was great to save money to collect them. Now, it's all available on a click of a button from your preferred music store. You download it, play on your computer, which tends to sound not that great, even if you have great speakers, it always seems to be missing a component. Much like when vinyls disappeared and it's successor the CD emerged.

Anyway, It's also a hassle to listen to music on the computer with the long ish boot up or resumes. Yes, there are mp3 portable music players, but I want something that doesn't require me to sync or download to and from the computer, especially with those DRM or playback restrictions , or ones that require extra hardware or perpehrials just to listen to music.

I also dislike registering services, it's not the registration itself, it's the passwords that I have to make and store. I just want to put my CD and play. Yes, you can burn the music on to CD's, but then unless your really hardware savvy, most users end up burning on their average laptop or desktop and it's a slow process. Not everyone likes to have their computers on 24-7. Some just want to wake up to music and go to sleep with music.

I guess I should just be a drone and just admit that it's cheaper to buy music in digital format from an online store and that transfering it to an mp3 player is a cool way to listen to music. I'm going to miss the CD, just like the vinyl, just like the tape.