[NTLK] Review of NewtonSales.com

[Greg Goodwin]

Hey all!  There have been those that have asked me about my experiences with NewtonSales.com, the "One Stop for Newton Hardware Upgrades and Accessories” out of Sweden.

I've been talking to NewtonSales since 2021 mostly with me wondering if I should pull the trigger on buying things.  

For a good part of 2025 they went into a bit of a hiatius with the engineering upgrades though the existing upgrade boards and accessories were still for sale.  The speed boost requires some soldiering while the eMate's 2 mb upgrade is a daughterboard you can easily slip in just opening the battery port.
By the fall of 2025 the engineering upgrades were back on and a speed upgrade for the eMate was possible.  While I am currently typing on the boosted eMate I got from them and I also picked up the port dock that they sell, I'll talk about the ordering experience with NewtonSales this time and the others another time.

Overall, NewtonSales did fine.  

We corresponded for that year during their engineering upgrade hiatus.  The engineer that does the soldering work was taking care of life things for a bit.  We talked about what was possible and what would be needed for shipping and purchasing items.  That all went fine.
 
As a long time retro computer nut, mostly with Atari equipment, with some time on the Amiga and of course Newton; I am used to tech projects from Europe.  We have some good ideas here in the States, but I have purchased many items also from Europe.

Over the last twenty years all went pretty well.  But the last few years have gotten beastly for shipping between the States and over the pond.

This is no fault of NewtonSales I want to say in advance, but shipping my eMate for upgrade from the United States to Sweden was just shy of $100 USD.  The package arrived in Sweden and was sent back once there due to their customs thinking a battery was involved.  There was no battery.
My post office was nice enough to resend the package, this time it made it.  Despite saying the value was at $1, for a friend, no battery, etc,  $80 USD was changed in customs.  So already I'm into this for nearly $200, plus it would be another $70 shipping it back.  That is the ugly part.  The nice part was the upgrade service was only $199, plus a $39 daughterboard to increase the ram the extra 2 mb, and I got a rebuilt battery for $110.  All those prices I consider alright for a low production support products for a product from the nineties even Apple barely acknowledges.

Bear in mind:

1) NewtonSales was pretty responsive bearing in mind they are on the other side of the world and different time zone.  

2) It is roughly 17 days one way for packages as they can meander.  Coming back from Sweden the  package went all the way to a hour from me in Texas, then hundreds of miles back to the east coast in Pennsylvania, then back to me and soonafter and delivered.  Thought it was going back to Sweden and if it had I was ready to write the whole thing off.  I believe an inquiry from NewtonSales as the sender helped maybe get the package back from Pennsylvania?  Won't discount it.
 
3) They have Newton products which all tested to work fine.

4) Like a lot of these fan-made things for a system beyond it's initial commercial sales date, NewtonSales do this as a side venture.  That is to say, they provide the service providing accessories and upgrades, but it is not their day job.  So have patience.  Once they had me send over the eMate I can say the turn around time was about five months.  Actually had other fan projects, pre-order arrangements, and kickstarters I've been involved with that took longer than that.

Coming up in future messages, what is a boosted eMate like?  How useful is a port dock for the interconnect port?   More on those later on.