I recently had an interesting talk with Lotus Corporation's Leon Navickas, the head of R & D when the HP 95LX was being developed.
In fact, Leon was the driving force of the HP 95LX from the Lotus side. He got the idea of a Lotus 1-2-3 palmtop and called Hewlett-Packard's Dan Terpack, the head of the Corvallis Calculator Division. It turned out that HP had been working on a palmtop. HP and Lotus exchanged ideas and engineering talent and the 95LX evolved as we have come to know it. HP worked on the hardware and HP CALC, Lotus wrote most of the rest of the built-in applications.
In the course of our conversation, Leon mentioned that Lotus was committed to System Manager and the Personal Information Manager applications (PHONE, COMM, FILER, APPT, and MEMO). Lotus developed System Manager and these applications. Lotus plans to put versions of these System Manager applications on future HP Palmtops and in future palmtops with other manufacturers. This is good news for HP 95LX users. It means we might see improved versions of HP 95LX software and hopefully additional add-in products that will work with these PIMs.