After yesterday’s ministerial round table on IPv6 I chaired an ITSPA meeting on Number Portability. Tim Ward from Neustar wowed us all by unveiling his Apple MessagePad2000. There were few of us in the meeting old enough to remember it.

This museum piece is based on the Apple Newton platform first released in 1993. Tim’s version harks back to 1997 which coincidentally is when Apple dropped support for the platform. He still uses it today instead of using paper – fair enough.

The MessagePad didn’t suffer from Y2K issues but funnily enough had a Y2010 problem. Fortunately there are still enthusiast developers around that support it and there is a patch for the bug. These early versions of the iPad (bit of a stretch I know) have held their value well with good condition versions selling for around £400! That’s not far off the price of an iPad.

I did note that the MessagePad2000 doesn’t support flash either. This particular one is still in daily use and is set to last for another few years yet. Nice one Tim:)