I use my MessagePad 2100 regularly. It's a really wonderful device waaaaaaaaay ahead of its time.
I am considering getting a reMarkable to use as my "daily driver" replacement, and dedicating the Newton to my home office museum.
I had an eMate and it was (and still is - if you replace the battery pack) an exceptional device for taking notes and focused distraction free writing.
What makes it great for these tasks is that it wakes from sleep instantly and puts you right back where you were in your document as fast as you can open it. Saving is automatic. You just open it up, type some stuff, and close it again. It's light, rugged, and the battery lasts all day.
What's not great anymore is that it's non-trivial to transfer your writings to a modern system. However, it is still possible.
Looking through the list of 3rd party implementations, I came across the Digital Ocean devices (not the cloud provider; the original company was defunct by the late 1990s) - the Newton came out just a few years before I really started getting into tech (I was a poor high school kid at the time), so not terribly familiar with a lot of companies in that space. I do remember seeing the Newton being used in the Steven Seagal movie, Under Siege 2, which came out in 1995.
“Can I use my Newton as a web server?”
Really? That’s a frequently asked question?
Is it really a good FAQ if it doesn't explain _what_ it is as top level info? What is this? There are no links to the original product (or whatever it is - hardware? Software? OS?) either in the first few minutes of navigation.
In working on my Book III (basically, the early 90s), I've done a ton of research on handheld devices and the money pit they were. Newton is not going to be any more than a footnote.
Jerry Kaplan's book Startup tells the story about how Sculley stabbed GO in the back with Newton -- actually, both GO and General Magic. They got a lot of press and flopped miserably. And of course, let's not forget Momenta (as easy as that would be, given that they failed so fast).
Meantime, Palm finally figured out something people would buy and use, by scaling back expectations and building a device that did something valuable.