I bought my BN in the summer of 2000, so obviously, there was no packmate at that time, and the BN was head and shouldars ahead of anything at that time. Sometimes I think if I were to start all over again, the Packmate sounds attractive because it can run off the shelf software and peripherals, but I have heard that in practice, this doesn't really happen, and FS ended up including their own word processor and calculator anyway.
Andy
