You are right, that is not where the problem lies. I used that sort of apps in those days too :-)

The thing is, they were actually developed ON and FOR the hardware platforms of the time, taking their limitations into account -- so if it worked on the coder's machine, it would also sort of work on those of the users.

With these new portable Linux machines like the 770 and the Sharp Zaurus we have a very different situation. Because they run Linux and some mainstream GUI framework (like Qt/Qtopia and Gtk/Maemo), it is faster and thus very tempting to simply port existing desktop apps from their KDE and Gnome cousins, than to code them from scratch for the specific platform (as was the case for Psions and Palms).

Problem is, those apps were made for current desktop hardware, and generally coded in blissful oblivion of CPU cycles, RAM and disk occupation, and screen resolution. So yes, our 770 is way more powerful than that 286, and perfectly capable of running A graphic newsreader (if coded carefully with the platform in mind, as the one on the Psion 5mx was), but maybe not THIS particular newsreader retrofitted from Ubuntu...

I was first confronted with this on the Zaurus with its glacially slow ports of KDE juggernauts and their dialog boxes larger than the screen... Another good example on the 770 is the size and speed of gnuite's MaemoMapper vs the port of GPSdrive.