Kudos for NS Basic/Newton

These are actual comments from our users - going from oldest to most recent.

"ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL, now we can start working on Special add-ons that deliver to user all the Power of the Newton !!!" - Alain Falanga, France

"All the new features are most excellent, esp. the _proto and inline fxns." - Mark Holmes, San Francisco

"Wow, great product!!!" -Todd Robinson, Tampa

"Very pleased with the update and manual!" - Henry Littleboy, Boston

"Also, I love NS BASIC!!! I soon as I got it in the mail, I have been writing programs day and night to perform tasks that I have been wanting to do every since I bought my Newton. I think NS BASIC is the best program out there for the Newton." - Bill Falk, Honeywell

"Wow! This is great. I can assure you the thought of Newton BASIC never crossed my mind. Actually, we came very close to taking the compiler out of the ROM because of space constraints, but I was pretty sure somebody would figure out how to do something cool with it..." - Walter Smith, Apple Computers (Walter is the "Father of NewtonScript")

"Bundle it with a book on Basic (Basic Basic) or cover much of the same material in your user's manual, and you'd have a great package for teachers." - John Schettino, GTE Laboratories

"It could be a hit within the scientific community, because many people dislike travelling with a laptop to a two-day conference, everyone has learned BASIC at some stage in their careers" - Marcello Magnasco, Rockefeller University

"Let me first say that I have had the pleasure of using your product for over a month now and have found it to be a wonderful tool." - Mark Spurrier, Stillwater, OK

"This thang is great! Nice, clean presentation and specs. I WILL have it. NS BASIC sounds like it could be a "must have" in the students' standard software config. IÕm really enjoying NSB ..." -- Mark Holmes, Intromation

"It works! NSBASIC IS REALLY COOL!" - Michael Schmidl, FAST Electronic, Munich

"If you're one of the millions who grew up on BASIC and still have code you'd like to recycle, NS BASIC is perfect. " - Rob Bruce, Intelligent Newton

"May I say that NSBASIC is what Apple should ship standard with every Newton... Excellent product." -- Ron Nagamati

"I think you and/or the company should be thanked - a great product which from what I can see will be even better with release 2." Huw Davies, Latrobe University Computing Services, Australia

"I just got the update to 2.01! I'm very impressed! Keep up the good work!"-Mike Green

"Great product" -Jim Thompson, Tadpole Technologies

"Thanks for sending NS BASIC 2.01. I have been playing around with it for a couple of days and really love the enhancements. Keep up the great work!!!" - Stephen Wong, Skilled Solutions

"I still think it's cool, especially all the new stuff."- Walter Smith, Apple Computer "Father of the Newton"

"I just wanted to let you know that NS Basic is one of the most useful Newton utility program I have used. I am really enjoying the programming. Congratulations on a great product." - Riaz Ahmad, Japan

"I have had my copy of NSBASIC for a week now. I love it. It is worth the money. I can do some things now that I haven't been able to do in the year+ that I have used my MP100." Henry Melton

"Thank you for sending me a free update to NS BASIC Ver. 2.0! Your company may be a little bit smaller than Microsoft, but your support is a stunner. I wish there were more people like you." - Hilmar R. Schreck , Germany

"We've all been recommending your NS BASIC very highly. No serious Newton user should be without it... Your NS BASIC package should be purchased by anyone who is doing any kind of Newton development, so that they can save considerable time." -- Phil Harvitz, ISIS

"I have been using NSBASIC for 4 to 5 months to demonstrate the feasibility of the device to a doctor. This is going very well, and I am very happy with NSB. If, however, you are going to write something of 20 to 40 lines or more, using the serial interface and a com program on a mac or pc can be from very helpful to essential. My current prog is around 320 lines and would be unmanageable with out some access to a pc/mac and quick storage. I have sat out by the pool and done some tinkering and tweeking with the standard newt interface, but I still need to go back and update and review on a nice big screen. I have been programming since '78, never thought I see Basic again, but this is fun. Its speed is probably its only major problem, but what do you want for nothing, err cheap (comparatively speaking). I haven't seen NEWT 2.4, but I'll give NSB two thumbs and eight fingers up. ( and after seeing the announcement of ver. 2.0, I'll throw in some toes too.)((those that I can find)). Hopefully by the time your ready to jump into NTK, Apple will have seen the light in its pricing (laughter)(more laughter)(asphyxiation)......" David Whiteman, Los Angeles

"A happy NS Basic user." Alan Bell

"Thanks again for a GREAT product!" Scott Fringer

"Great Product." - Herb Otto, Annapolis, MD.

"I have just received the upgrade for ver. 2.03 Basic for the Newton. I would like to thank you and compliment you on the fine product you have made. If more companies tried as hard as you to please their customers, I don't think there would be unemployment or inflation because consumers would buy a lot more merchandise. In closing, I think that your company is excellent! and I will continue to buy your products in the future! Thanks for freeing my Newton from the confines of canned software and the decision of not having to buy the Newton development system and MAC system." - Michael J. Hoevenaar, Electronic Repair, Peoria, IL

"Thank you for your quick response. It is a pleasure doing business with such a service oriented company. I am looking forward to writing some programs with NS Basic for my Newton and anxiously await your new upgrade." Michael DeClerk, Princeton, NJ.

"Thank you for sending me a free upgrade to the version 2.52. I am very happy with your nsbasic! Recently I joined the local newton mailing list in Japan, and I always recommend your great product to the people who want to start programming in their newtons. I hope that all of newton users would find it amazing to program with nsbasic! Thanks again for a great product!", Kazunori Iriya, Okayama, Japan

"Thanks for your help; I'm really excited about NS Basic and can see it's going to be the best addition to my Newton.", Bob Patin, Nashville

"The support that you've given is one of the things that mark a great company and support staff." -- Matt Riehl

"I just started using the new version of NS on my MP 120 and I love it. Great job." -- Andrew Castle

"NS Basic is great! ...Congratulations on a great product." -- Tim Hodges

"You've got a wonderful product that's been around from the earliest days of the Newton. Keep up the fantastic work!" - Lee Moon

"Wouldn't it be nice if all software companies were as efficient as you?" Chris Dunn, Australia

"Maybe it is because NS Basic works so well, and it is so easy to use that no one else is writing about it. NS Basic does exactly what I want to do so I have no reason to make any complaints, and it is easy enough to use that I don't have to make any posts to ask for help. For the specialized work I needed buying a Newton and NS Basic was far cheaper and easier than any other alternative. I already know Basic, so I did not have the steep learning curve that NTK has or the other Newton Script environments. My first application in NS Basic was written the day after I received NS Basic in the mail. It was a simple program to help me write a pathology report when I perform a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy. I can carry the Newton up to the ward and enter information about the patient from the chart on to the Newton using a checklist program written in NS Basic. A second program converts the Newton to a custom keyboard, that fits my fingers, so I can tally cells that I see under the microscope with out looking at the Newton. I then fill out another checklist and the Basic program generates the report, so I don't have to dictate it.
Yes I could use a laptop for the above, but I would have to look at the keys. Tapping on the Newton screen is a lot easier and faster. Furthermore it is far faster using one hand to turn pages in a chart while using the other to write or tap on the Newton than it is to type on to a laptop.
I have since written several NS Basic programs to assist me in my work."

David B. Whiteman, M.D.
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (113)
Wadsworth VA Medical Center, West Los Angeles
11301 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90073
whiteman.david© west-la.va.gov

"Again thanks for your prompt and courteous support. A very satisfied customer!" - Rick Hollm

"Congratulations to your excellent Web site, makes it comforting to see this sort of access to the people who understand their product." -- Linden Elliott, Australia

"Another choice is NS Basic, which allows you to program your Newton using either the Newton for input or your desktop computer. Programs can be made into packages that don't require any additional software to run. I highly recommend it; it allows for creation of all the familiar Newton features, like popup menus, datePickers (the calendar that you choose dates from), the digital clock (new to system 2.0), editable fields, and much more." - Bob Patin

"This is my own personal opinion on a Newton product. I don't usually do this for obvious reasons. NS Basic and Visual Designer is totally awesome. If you want to do some serious hacking on your Newton I suggest you check it out." - Steve Holden, Publisher of NewtNews

"I like the way you have a complete product with full access to Newton's features." -- Mark Hahn, California

"I received my upgrade copy of NS BASIC, including Visual Designer. Thanks for all your hard work on an excellent programming environment for the Newton! Thanks again for the great program and all your hard work!" -- David A. Cammack, California

"I really like the NSBasic program." - Tom Osswald, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Great product! I feel so good about NS Basic that I sold my NTK to someone who wants to spend the time on learning it...." - Steve Sande, P.E. Sansoft, Colorado

"This is a GREAT product. " -- John Lemansky, Novell

"i'm finding nsBASIC a delight: it's like a scripting system for the Newton. i can write my own programs (scripts?) to collect and export data in exactly the format i want it. and change them instantly on the newton! many thanks for a wonderful product." -- Richard MacElreath, UCLA

"I am very impressed with the NS Basic. It is much easier to use than Newton Toolkit. I have not used BASIC since my high school years but the examples in the manual bring my memory back instantly." -- Patrick Kee, Australia

"Thanks for sending me the latest upgrade to NSBASIC (v3.52). You folks have a great product and your dedication to customer support is appreciated." -- Loren Lovhaug

"Love the product.. Thank you." -- Paul Southwell, Australia

"I'm finding NSBasic is the PERFECT tool for somebody like me: bright, but not a programmer, sees the potential of the Newton OS but doesn't see that one "perfect tool" that they think would tie it all together. The combo of your manual (which is about half a step beyond me, in terms of what it assumes I know) and the Schettino/O'Hara "Basic for the Newton" (which is about half a step behind me), I'm up and productive with the version I have already in just the first day." -- Richard Millward, Illinois

"Thank you for the fast and precise reply. Your support is excellent!" - Volker Muehlhaus, Germany

"I need to thank you, for answering all my questions. I live in Brazil, and I have a software house here. I discovered Newton some years ago, and bought NSBasic because it was, at that time, the only way to do programming for Newton, without having a Mac (I have PCs). Now I'm finding that it's a good way to program for Newton, even now that Apple, finally, got Newton Script for PC. It's easiest to program in Basic, almost every one knows Basic, and the problems I'm having the WWWBoard is supplying, with no problem. Thanks for the support." -- Daniela Moura

"Truly a wonderful program, really opens up the Newton. Thanks!" -- K. Spleid

"Also, if you'll allow me to offer some kudos...I absolutely love my Newton, more so than my Mac, perhaps. But the addition of NS-Basic has opened a whole new realm of possibilities for myself and I love it! You have an excellent WWW site and the support I received prior to my purchase was great! You have an incredible product, and I have a hunch that it'll keep getting better! Thanks!" -- Ryan Nedbalek - Stoughton, WI

"Hands down the simplest and fastest way to put together a Newton serial link is by using NS Basic. No endpoints, no hassles, flexible, and very easy to implement. If you have done previous development work, you are probably already familiar with BASIC, so you won't have to learn NewtonScript (or try to wade through Apple's endpoint documentation) either - a bonus almost worth the price of NS Basic by itself. I don't work for them, I just think it's a great product for this particular application." - Tim Hodges

"Thanks! Thanks! THANKS! Once again, you are very quick to respond and you give me a working, correct answer." - Dick Swarn

"First of all thank you for the fantastic effort, it is very reassuring ro see customer support isn't a thing of the past. On every occasion a question has been asked your company has come up with the goods". - Ross Barnes, Digimech Design, Australia

"I have been doing some innovative work with Apple Newtons where the focus has been on using the Newton as an "electronic laboratory notebook" for _both_ data acquisition and annotation + record keeping (including GIS info) in the field. We think the Newton is the ideal tool, especially since it has high level software development tools (including languages like NSBASIC--the programming language for us mere mortals) that will allow educators and others to develop custom software for data acquisition and analysis. Apart from an article published in Journal of Chemical Education in February 1996 (which I believe is the first and only peer-reviewed article on application of the Newton in data acquisition and storage), our Biology Department had a pre-collegiate intern working this past summer on Newton applications in biology. At the moment, this student has taken a complete Newton-based data acquisition system with her to Indonesia (where she is spending a year as an exchange student) to work on temperature measurements in rain forests and around volcanoes!" - Dr. Rama Viswanathan

"I remain impressed with the NSBASIC support and product..." - Linden Elliott, Australia

"This is more of a personal note: I have used a number of program langages from a number of platforms, but I have never had this high of a level of support or as much positive contact with any company. You ALL deserve a pat on the back and a warm thank you." -- Matt Rittenhouse, Germantown, MD. "Your NS BASIC is very good! Because easy to use, useful serial communication, and it can use Japanese." -- Kenichi Yajima

"I got version 3.6 this Monday, and wanted to tell you what an awesome piece of work it is! I do quite a bit of programming with Visual Basic, so writing apps with NSB3.6 is a snap. In fact I re-wrote an app that keeps track of internet sites, which I originally wrote using VB using NSB3.6 and it took me about 45 minutes. Great job on an already excellent product, thanks!" Steve Mane, Elxsi

"...been waiting for a new platform supporting good old basic and from what I have seen, NS BASIC is wonderful! Keep up the fantastic work!" -- Harley Poole

"I think NS-BASIC is a great program; the Visual Designer is amazing." - Richard Schmidt

"First I want to thank you for writing this great product of NSBasic. When I got my first Newton which was the Model 120, I missed the posibility to write own Programms on the Newton. Special on the Newton itself, because I have for sure my Newton always with me but not my PB, which would be needed if you want to programm with the NewtonToolkit. I find the NSBasic very useful and easy to use." - Peter Obst, Germany

"It worked like a charm! I am always so amazed on how fast you can answer questions from your users and I very much appreciate the type of service and support you provide to us (and you can quote on this one!). Once again thank you." - Mohamed Bennouf

"I've been re-vamping a custom application that I've written with NS Basic, and am totally amazed at how much faster it runs on the MP2000. In addition to the huge increase in screen real estate, responsiveness is so much faster that I've been able to re-write my application (which is used for booking recording sessions in Nashville, TN) so that it does so much more than it originally did. With NS Basic and a 2000, any decent Basic programmer can write excellent programs for the Newton that are as fast as other programs I've been using. I'm totally impressed with it." - Bob Patin, on comp.sys.newton.misc

"I agree 100%! I was expecting some speed improvement but this is really fast. The most astonishing area of improvement is in file i/o. NS Basic is the best $100 I have spent on my Newton so far." - George Crump

"I must say it has come in handy many times such as when I needed to prototype my app [for my Westinghouse project]. I use it in math class as a scientific calculator. One of the the most useful things I've found is that it allows me to work with Newton Script function calls and make sure that they are doing what I want because I can construct the function statements on the fly. I am truly impressed by NS-Basic. Thank you. " - Avi Kohn

"I've been playing with NS Basic for a day now... I'm impressed. You've done a great job! In this day and age, people often forget how much can be done with limited hardware resources, as long as sloppy code is not used..." Edmund Lian, Australia

"Great Product !!!!!!!!!!!!" - M.Fernando Alvarez Lama, Spain

"The software, NS BASIC, is also a 5-star program. It has simple commands, shortcut menus, and other handy features." - Michael Neely, NewtonInfo

"They're selling like hotcakes! Thanks a bundle!" - John Catlin, NewtonCentral

"Great Product - took 5 minutes to install and write my first Newton Application!" Andrew Pennington, South Africa

"Hands down you guys are AWESOME! Keep up the good work and thanks once again." - Ron Oshiro

"Great product" - John Maltby, England

"Thanks for creating such a wonderful product. I am using NTK for some applications, and Leverage for soup creation. NS Basic is a welcome addition." - Chris Christian

"WOW WHAT SERVICE!!! Now I'll really have to truly learn Basic . But with a Newton that'll still be fun. Thanks for the really prompt reply (don't you sleep??). I'm the President of OzNUG (the Australian Newton Users Group) and tonight we had a Group Meeting. The focus was on NSBasic with some really practical examples and experience from users. Thanks for a great product." - David Philpott

"I really like the book [NS BASIC Tutorial]. I used to teach 7th and 8th graders programing in BASIC and LOGO back in the dark ages with Apple II's. I find that running BASIC on the eMate is suprisingly fast and the book is well laid out. A teacher could start from the begining with Middle School students and I could see 9th graders with some intro of the begining chapters getting involved in a number of the later chapters. In both cases I could see using this in Math and Science classes although I am sure many schools would like to use this for enrichment as a seperate breakout class.
Regardless, I think the book gives some good background and is user friendly. Using it I didn't feel I had to do all the sections. If I felt comfortable I went on to other units. If I needed more work I went through all the steps of the Chapter." - Bob Densmore, Apple Distinguished Educator

"As a programming environment, NS BASIC is pure genius. The programming environment is simple enough for the outright beginner... It is also complex and deep enough to satisfy anyone interested in programming for the Newton, but scared off by NewtonScript. Visual BASIC programmers will breath easy since they will have such a short learning curve. In an educational setting, the combination of Newton technology and NS BASIC is a great environment to spark interest in programming." - Pen Computing, June 1997

"This is just to say how much I appreciate the prompt replies you've given to my NS BASIC queries on the BBS. Very helpful! I bought the product a very short time ago, and I like it a lot - it seems very comprehensive, and about 100 times easier to use than NTK - my real problem is that I want to run before I can walk as far as the eMate/Newton GUI is concerned. I want to be able to write handlers based on messages sent to objects, like I do with SuperCard on the Mac. I haven't even worked out if the Newton OS works like this or not! Meanwhile NS BASIC is teaching me a lot every day." - Graham Samuel, England

"I'm very impressed with your software, documentation and on-line BBS support and congratulate you on such a great product." - Wayne Parker, IBM New Zealand

"Not only is this product wonderful, the support makes it even better... I sent this to Steve Holden (NewtNews) and told him he could publish it:
I am a professional c/unix programmer (since 1983). (no horn tooting intended). Like other of the 70/80 era, I started with BASIC... Seems that once you leave basic, you don't want to come back. So, of course, if i was gonna' program this little newton thing, it was gonna' have to be in newton script... I TRIED... HONEST I DID. I bought newts, and even Visual newts, I bought the OFFICIAL BOOK. But I got little out of it... THEN I saw it. A friend had NSbasic.... Could I, should I..... Would I... I did. It's been a joy. (even supports structured coding). If you remember basic (and/or like to forget it). DON'T... give this FINE product a try.... I don't think you'll be sorry (IMNSHO)." - Len Lutz, Texas

"The program that I just completed is for use at work (the Radiation Calibration Lab at the University of Wisconsin). It will be used to verify radiation calculations on reports that show how much exposure and mean glandular dose is received during a mammogram.
My next task is similar, but will include a linear regression algorithm and the calculations will be to verify dose received during radiation therapy on cancer patients.
Thanks for a great tool and for such great support!" - Richard C. Schmidt

"My program "Director" is getting some good comments on the Web (see the NewtonUnderground site for example, and Newton Central); of course, written with the fabulous NSB!" - Bob Patin

"I just want to say I love your program, I'm a 7th grade student and am making a program to keep track of homework. Your visual designer is great, I don't know what I would do without it!!!" - Mark Frenkel

"Gecko Rating: 4.0 My bottom line assessment is that this is a well designed and well supported programming environment. Sure, you can get the Newton Toolkit free now from Apple, but what you cannot get from them is the knowledge to make it work. If you want to create applications for the MessagePad or eMate, this is your easiest approach."

- Gecko Magazine, December 1997.