I can't believe it's been over 3 years since my last Newton purchase! All I need to complete the set are the 2000 and 2100 models. Unfortunately, people on eBay regularly ask for more than $200 for those models. It's highway robbery I tell you! When I hear stories of people buying Newtons at garage sales for $5 bucks, I just can't bring myself to pay those kind of prices.

Fortunately, I managed to score a 2000 in the box with most of the bells and whistles for only $90 bucks. That's a steal. Most of the 2000s on eBay are without the box and accessories.





It has both the Mac and PC versions of the software.



Like all vintage Apple products, there's no shortage of documentation. However, I do seem to be missing the main user's guide.



The Newton came with the rechargeable battery, the 4xAA battery well, the charger, and a serial cable. The serial cable is useless without the adapter, which of course is missing.



Luckily, I had one in the box that my Newton 130 came in. Good luck finding one of these on eBay.



The display cover is pretty dinged up and scratched, but the body of the Newton is in pretty good shape.



It looks like it's also missing two screws on the back.



It does still have the PC Card slot blanks. Most people would remove them in favor of RAM cards and modems, and then lose the blanks. The previous owner either never used any cards or kept the blanks safe within the box.



They did however, lose the stylus, Why is it so hard to hold onto a stylus? Another thing I noticed is that this 2000 has been upgraded to a 2100. The only difference between the two models is that the 2000 had 1MB of RAM and the 2100 had 4MB.



So overall, this Newton is a nice-to-have, but between the scuffed up display cover, the missing screws, and the fact that it's not an original 2000, I'll probably keep my eye out for a better one. I like my stuff to be as mint as possible.

I popped in some AAs and powered on the Newton. It works.



Luckily, I have a 2MB card from a previous purchase.



I checked the RAM. It has 4MB. So it really is a 2000 that was upgraded to a 2100. It's also running Newton OS 2.1.



I tried to install the software that came with it, but unfortunately, it's a beta that expired in 1997. Who ships a finished product with beta software? See, this is the crap Apple pulled when Steve wasn't around.



Luckily, I have a legacy recovery disc that has pretty much every Apple utility on it that you'd ever need. I installed Newton Connection Utilities…



…and connected my Newton.



I launched the software…



…and configured my connection.



Success!



Once you have a successful connection, all the icons light up.



You can initiate a transfer from either end.



I threw a few packages onto my Mac that I downloaded from the internet.



I then installed the packages.



Looks like they work.



As a test, I typed up a little memo and used the MacInTalk package that I installed to convert the text to speech.

Pretty cool.



I also found a few simple games.





Almost 20 years later, it looks like it's getting pretty hard to get your hands on some quality software for the Newton. I only found a few sites that had some stuff. Maybe I just need to do a little more digging. I would like to get my hands on a WiFi card and see if I can get it on the internet, but that's a project for another day.

For now, I'm one Newton closer to completing the collection.