Zadillo

@konali I suspect it might be a song cooked up specifically for Sony (the lyrics seem to have a lot of gaming themes in them - "this world is yours to play as you like" and that sort of thing). And neither SoundHound or Shazam seem to recognize it. Catchy though.

Hrmm, like others have mentioned, I saw some apps show up in the market, but not others, specifically Monopoly. On the website I clicked the "get it" button and it sent me a link to eamobile.com to open up my EVO, and it took me to a site of games it said were optimized for my EVO - this included Monopoly Here & Now Edition. I was primarily interested in the classic version - although also, from the screenshots, it looks really low-res - certainly not optimized for the EVO, and looks considerably poorer than the iPhone version I remember.

I guess this is sort of what you have to deal with when it comes to Android, but still disappointing - I did at least buy Tetris for a buck.

For what it's worth, I've left Flash disabled on my EVO with Froyo 2.2 and Flash 10.1. I tried a few Flash sites, and found that the Flash still seemed to bog things down - I tried playing some Flash video on ESPN and it was still somewhat choppy. And I haven't found it to be incredibly present interacting with Flash content (it usually seemed to involve zooming in and out, scrolling around, having to click a few times, etc.).

I guess I'm glad to have the option of Flash content, but so far I haven't seen anything that didn't still seem like a subpar experience.

One question - in that video, it seems to imply an action of one drag movement of a photo from the top screen to the bottom screen (but it's done with an invisible "pointer" instead of a finger, so not sure how it translates). Does this thing actually have some concept of dragging from one screen to the other? I'm curious how that works in practice (is the hinge in between touch sensitive so you can continue one drag movement from one screen to the other?).

@Gregorian Yup, agreed. I would say that the Newton was one of the first devices that really got me into gadget lust (that and maybe the Psion Series 3c, which when I saw it in the Sharper Image catalogue fascinated me to no end). As noted, the later Newtons like the MessagePad 130 and certainly the MessagePad 2000 and 2100 were really nice improvements and they're still pretty impressive even today.

I do wonder if a smaller Newton would have helped - probably so. Even though the PalmPilot was more limited and simpler in a lot of ways, you're absolutely right that the form factor and cost made it a lot more appealing and successful. But at the same time, I think the Newton's form factor was necessary to have a comfortable amount of room for handwriting (something which wasn't an issue with the PalmPilot and its single-character graffiti input).

As a note, Jobs didn't simply kill off a planned spin-off. Newton Inc. had been successfully spun off as a separate company. It was reabsorbed into Apple and THEN killed off.

@ComboBreaker That's why I ultimately decided on a combo of a wifi-only iPad and an EVO 4G with a mobile hotspot. So far it's working out really well (data is nice and fast, and it's nice not to have to worry about hitting a 2GB data cap.... same reason I also didn't wait for the Droid X on Verizon).

@Bhima You might want to check notebookcheck.net's reviews - they go into fanatical detail on the screens in terms of analyzing viewing angles, contrast ration, brightness, etc.

@andysexton Yeah, this is one thing I'm not clear on. What is the practical difference between the Core i3 and the Core i5? I've read some things indicating that the Core i3 is considerably weaker, but nothing really concrete.

I was playing around with one of these at MicroCenter, and for what it's worth, the keyboard seemed pretty solid. Not quite up there with the 13" MBP or Vaio Z, but I definitely didn't notice a ton of flex as described in the review. The screen seemed pretty average though, certainly next to the Vaio Z's screen though. But for the price, hard to complain. My local MicroCenter also has a config of this Acer with a Core i5 and ATI 5650 for $899 which I believe is more comparable in spec to the Vaio Z, and not a bad option at a lower price. But the Vaio Z still seems like one of the best PC laptops out there right now IMO.