Read about Featured Gadgeteer - Mark Rosengarten

Gadgeteer News

March 01, 2004

Name: Mark Rosengarten
Location: New York

They don't call me "The Gadget Man" for nothing!

It seems to my co-workers that I come in to work every week with some new gadget. I am the person the creators of Ebay had in mind. I buy, use, get bored and move on.

I am a chemistry teacher, my name is Mark Rosengarten, and I am a Gadgeteer.

Why do I deserve this title so cherished by readers of this site? Read on, be brave and I will tell you.

My love of gadgets goes back to my first laptop, the Tandy 1100FD, with a transflective yellow screen with blue characters. It was stolen off my desk in my office at the school I teach at, and it really ticked me off. It fueled my search for another laptop.

I saw an ad in a Damark catalog for a Panasonic BP-470 laptop for $599. It even came with a carrying case! It was a great laptop and it lasted me two years. I sold it to a friend who was entering law school and needed a laptop for papers and internet access. At this time, I was on Prodigy and was running the Prodigy software very nicely from this laptop with its built-in 2400 baud modem.

In 1993, I purchased a Prolinear PIC-1000 palmtop computer. This was an XT palmtop that was a clone of the Zeos Pocket PC. It followed me on a trip out west, where I used it to type the trip log. When I got back from the trip, I hungered for a more powerful portable for use at work, so I sold the Palmbook and got a Midwest Micro Elite laptop, 486slc-33, that served me very well for the next year and a half. A contest in AOL's PDA area gave away two Psion Series 3a's. I did not win, but it fueled the fire for my palmtop lust that continues to today. I bought the HP200LX. This palmtop has gone through an awful lot and I still have and use it today. It's still in perfect condition and I used it until this year to run my grading program.

When Palm first announced their Pilot 1000 and 3000, I printed out the life-size image from the web site and created a mock-up out of thick paper and played with it for months while I waited for the real thing to come out. When it finally was released, I rushed to Circuit City and bought one. Then I bought the Palm Pilot Personal, and upgraded it to a Professional. Then I bought a Palm III, then a IIIxe, then a Handspring Visor Deluxe (blue!). I sold the Visor to another friend and got the Sony Clie PEG-610N, my first color handheld. This lasted two years before I replaced it with my current PDA, the Sony Clie SJ-33.

I have also owned and used the HP Omnibooks 300, 800CT and 500. My current laptop is the Fujitsu P-1120. At 2.2 pounds, it is the smallest and lightest laptop that you can buy direct in the U.S. I have also owned and used the IBM PC-110, two Toshiba Libretto 50's, a Libretto 70CT, Gateway Handbook, Handbook 486, Olivetti Quaderno, Casio and Tandy Zoomer, HP Omnigo 100, Canon Innovabooks 360CD and 475 CD, IBM Thinkpad 500, IBM Thinkpad 510cs, IBM Thinkpad 240, a Zeos Pocket PC, Tandy FD1100 HD laptop (the hard drive version of my original laptop), Tandy Model 100, IBM Workpad C3 (Palm Vx equivalent) and several Windows CE devices including the Casio A-11, Casio E-11, Uniden PSPC, NEC Mobilepro 450, Sharp Mobilon 4600, HP660, HP Jornada 680, HP Jornada 690, HP Jornada 720, NEC MobilePro 770, Jornada 545 and the Intermec 6651. I have owned and used the Psion Series 5 and Diamond Mako (Equivalent to the Psion Revo Plus), and I currently use a Psion Series 5mx. I even bought one of the Matsucom OnHand computer watches. I carried around the Xircom REX-3DS credit-card-sized PDA. I also have a Tandy Model 120 and Model 200, as well as a Twinhead Subnote 486-33, and two Compaq Contura Aeros...the 33 and 25 MHz models.

OK, what about the gadgets I have now? Well, there is the HP200LX, Psion 5mx, Fujitsu Lifebook P1120 and Sony SJ-33 I mentioned above, plus the following:

Digital Camera:
Canon S200 (I am trying to sell this off).
Canon S400 4-MP digital camera. This one has about the best macro mode I have ever seen.

Gameboy Advance SP

NK Kestrel 4000 hand-held weather station including temperature, pressure, humidity, dewpoint and wind speed, all data graphable and trackable.

Apple iPod, 30 GB 3rd generation with car adapter. I LOVE my iPod.

Sony MD505 minidisc player. This is being given to yet another friend this holiday season.

Kenwood TH-F6A handheld ham radio transceiver. My call sign is KC2LXG.

Portable TV's: Casio EV-550, Casio TV-200, Casio TV-30 and Citizen 06TA.

Garmin Etrex Legend handheld GPS.

Olympus L200 ultracompact minicassette recorder.

Canon Elura 40 DV pocket-sized digital camcorder.

Neo Geo Pocket.

Sony WEGA 36" HDTV with Panasonic home theater system (still paying that one off, at 0% interest, for the next 15 months). I have a 13-inch TV in the kitchen, a 13-inch TV in my office, a 19-inch TV in my bedroom and a 27" TV in the basement with my exercise bike. Get the feeling I like to watch TV? I love sales. I really do.

I also have a Tandy Model 120 and Model 200, as well as a Twinhead Subnote 486-33, and two Compaq Contura Aeros...the 33 and 25 MHz models. I took the Compaq Contura Aero 4/33 and put it to use with our Science Workshop lab probe interface at school.

I also have astronomy-related gadgets, including a Takahashi FS60C fluorite refractor with a Coronado SolarMax hydrogen-alpha solar filter on it that allows you to see prominences and solar flares. I also have a Tele Vue 76 apochromatic refractor on a solid Bogen tripod with a Tele Vue Upswing head on it. A Celestron C5+ and an Orion XT8 dobsonian reflector rounds out that collection. But wait! There are the Oberwerk 11X56 binos, the Orion Otter 10X28 waterproof binos and the Pentax 7X20 monocular.

I am sure there are some that I have forgotten, but you get the idea. I am going on a storm-chasing tour next summer, my second in as many years, and this time I am bringing an "Uncle Milty's" 17-pocket gadget vest. Everything fits nicely into it and I am looking forward to the trip.

"He must be rich," I hear you think.

Not on a teacher's salary, I ain't. How can afford to buy these gadgets? I am unmarried and have no children. This frees up money for gadgets. I don't take trips as a matter of course and I have few things to spend my money on. Usually I will sell off an old gadget on Ebay to afford the new gadget, but I will sometimes come upon a gadget that I hold onto for years, like my HP200LX. My iPod will also fit into that category. My passions in life are gadgets, teaching and my three cats.

Oh, yeah...and I check out the Gadgeteer web site at least three times a day in the hopes that something new will turn up. I have subscribed to Mobile Computer & Communications, Computer Shopper (back when it was a REAL magazine, not the thin nonsense it is today), PC Magazine and Popular Science. I used to read HP's Palmtop Paper and I check out Ebay for vintage gadgets daily. I also read every review on bargainpda.com's site and I visit www.techbargains.com six or more times a day. I ogle the PDA's at my local Best Buy and even give recommendations to people who are looking to buy a Palm or WinCE machine. I always seem to know more than the guy whose job it is to sell them. People come to me for PDA and laptop recommendations, and I love spending other people's money.

So am I a "Gadgeteer", or just a pathetic wannabe?

You decide.

And you had better decide correctly. :)