On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, L. D Mouer wrote:
 
> On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Ewen, Charles R. wrote:
>
> > I thought I'd drop a note on data collection. We just acquired two
> > Newton Messagepad 2000s to use as electronic field notebooks this
> > summer.  So far so good...
>
> Ah, deja vu all over again, as they say...
>
> I began electronic data collecting in the field back in 1983, I believe.
> My first field "computer" was an HP calculator with magnetic strip data
> collector. Then the next year I moved up to a Radio Shack 100, then to an
> Epson with a mini-tape drive. Finally we here at VCU went whole hog and
> bought some McIntosh powerbook 140s (First Generation), but my colleagues
> wouldn't let me carry them in the field (right, Robin?). Why not? Because
> what do you think happened to the HP, the Radio Shack 100 and the Epson?
> Sweat and dirt and electronics just don't mix, and I insist on trowelling
> from time to time. Trouble is, when I go to enter data, I enter half the
> site matrix into the kyeboard. Ah the days when we wrote our own
> data-entry programs in Basic!!!
>Dan
 
 
Righto Dan!  My experience is definitely that electronics don't do well
onsite.  But then, things have changed since we tried last.  The new
Newton does sound like a possibility, as long as there's a backup plan for
when the battries go out.  No one will ever convince me to go back to the
days of doing data-entry programs in Basic, Fortran or anything
else that involved using a keypunch machine---have you forgotten all those
days and days and days keypunching data only to find out that there was a
wrong keystroke on a card somewhere in the middle of the stack?
 
 
Robin