What do you do with your 95LX/100LX/200LX?

[nlj]

Until about two years ago I used a 200LX as a calendar and appointment scheduler, as a phonebook/addressbook, for taking notes, for keeping track of my finances, for shopping lists, for planning projects and organising my life, for keeping my diary/journal, for general text editing and programming, for reading e-books, for games like free cell solitaire, and for email. (I had a small external modem and a dial-up account long after such things became rare.).

My 200LX was probably my most-used possession, and the best tool I ever used.

The main drawback for me was the cracks that would form in the lid of the case near the hinge. I'd get about two years of use out of one before I had to send it in to Thaddeus for repair. I had two units so that I'd always have one that was in working order.

The last repair went very badly (truly terrible customer service and quality of work from Thaddeus, suddenly, after years of exemplary work). I decided I couldn't afford to stay in the game or keeping a working 200LX. (I felt, perhaps incorrectly, that the plastics in the case were getting even more brittle with age, and that the hinge cracks were starting much sooner.)

I decided to try a smartphone instead, to do the things I'd done on my 200LX. Huge mistake. Even though my smartphone has maybe 1000 times the processing power of my clock-doubled LX, as a computer it is not nearly as capable. Like a Fisher-Price kitchen, a smartphone looks a bit like useful tool, but it is just a toy.

The smartphone now only gets used for its calculator (RealCalc), text messages, and phone calls. To the extent my life gets oraganised at all, it happens in Emacs on a real computer. But even the smallest notebook computers are far too big, and I miss being able to pull my computer out of a pocket and start working on it instantly, anywhere, even with only one hand to spare.