tdvoth@watnot.UUCP (Terry Voth) (04/04/86)
I'm currently in the process of looking into a micro purchase. I must admit that I'm a bit HP biased because of my background. I'm wondering what
unbiased, non-promotional information I can get on the Vectra and/or the
HP Touchscreen (formerly the HP150). What is the difference between the two?
Can anyone tell me about the capabilities, limitations, good points, bad points
(does it come toilet-trained?), etc... on either/both? I'm particularily
looking at the business and database applications. Laserjet or Laserjet+
information would be appreciated, if you have it.
Mega-thanks
(ie. thanks a million)
Terry Voth
P.S. I'm getting thrown off my account with access to the net sometime this
month, so those that answer quickly will be a great help and will have their
camels blessed with eternal lumps(never mind, it's really late and I probably
couldn't figure out how to delete that line on this terminal even if I had
some form of desire at this dawning hour of the night/morning (it's amazing
how much time you can spend on the net when you're putting off typing up
an essay that's due today)).
:billw@Navajo.ARPA (William E. Westfield) (04/07/86)
The HP150 is a perfectly reasonable and fairly nice MSDOS based computer that you can do some neat stuff with, but it isn't very compatible with ANYTHING, and few people are writing software for it. In particular, though it has an 8088 and runs MSDOS, it is not at all compatable with the IBMPC at BIOS level or lower. The touch screen is initially neat, but not very useful. Disk IO is through HPIB interfaces, and is slow (though it is supposed to have been improved significantly since the version taht I am running on mine. Sigh). The VECTRA is supposed to be completely IBM PC/AT compatable, down to the bus, I think. I know less about it. It might be worthwhile. BillW ...glacier!navajo!billw BillW@Score.Stanford.edu
scott@hp-pcd.UUCP (scott) (04/08/86)
I agree. The HP150 is a fairly nice machine, but isn't at all IBM compatible. There is a program available which installs most all of the important IBM BIOS calls, so that some IBM programs will then run okay. But, if the IBM program goes lower than the BIOS (direct screen memory access, com ports, etc.) then all bets are off. I've used this program with 4 other programs and have had good luck. Since there is a lot of public-domain IBM PCDOS programs already out there, the Vectra would probably be the computer of choice. If you can get a HP150 cheap, then that wouldn't be a bad choice. I have Basic, C, XLISP, Prolog, Forth, etc. for my 150 and have not had many problems with any of the languages.
jrc@hpcnof (04/14/86)
Well, I work for HP so I'll restrain my comments. If you're interested in an
AT class (80286) machine, check out a Vectra before blindly buying another
machine. Send mail for more information that is not appropriate for the net.
Jim Conrad
{ucbvax,ihnp4}!hplabs!hpcnof!j_conrad