bright@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Bob Bright) (04/11/91)
[This is a bit tacky, but I'm going to do it anyway, because of the obnoxious tone of the article I'm following up.] I've been carrying on an email discussion with Mark Choi re: his position w.r.t. the forthcoming Atari notebooks. In a letter of April 3 I suggested that he had something different in mind by "notebook computer" than TRH did, and that a good deal of ill will could have been avoided if this had been made clear at the outset: mc>> I do not mean these luggables when I refer to these machines, I mean mc>>what I stated, around the size of a piece of paper, and weighing less mc>>than 7 pounds, including battery, which lasts about 3 hours. bb> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ bb> bb>Yes, I know this is what you meant. This is also what I was referring bb>to. "<= 7 pounds with a reasonably small footprint (lapprint?)" is bb>becoming/has become the de facto definition of "notebook computer", bb>for no very good reason other than that the editors of various PC mags bb>are enamoured with full-featured semi-portable machines, and 6-7 bb>pounds is about as light as we've currently got in this category. bb> bb>I suspect that a lot of the recent hostility between you and TRH could bb>have been nipped in the bud if it had been made clear that you were bb>relying on this definition. TRH's view, I think, is that a 7 pound bb>machine which requires lugging around an extra 3 pounds of batteries bb>in order to be useful is too heavy. This is also my view. In a letter of April 3 Mark replied: mc>Actually, the definition of a notebook computer is one that is the size mc>of a notebook. In specific, the machines about which I was speaking, mc>were smaller than the Atari, about the same weight, I would guess (in mc>the 3 pound range), and still included the "extra" features, with a mc>batterlife of 3-4 hours. To which I replied (April 4): bb>I don't suppose you'd actually care to name some of these machines bb>about which you were speaking? Smaller than 8-1/2 x 11, less than 1" bb>thick, about 3 pounds, with built-in harddrive, 1.44 meg floppy, and bb>maybe some other stuff (a VGA port, I guess; not much of a space/ bb>weight consideration, but a definite power consideration as TRH bb>noted). I think you've got a pretty good imagination. Sounds like a bb>nice machine, but it doesn't exist; the only machines that currently bb>come anywhere close are in the 7 pound range. Mark replied (April 5): mc> I will get you a list of several machines that fit the description mc>after I go home. I haven't received any further email from Mark. Which brings us to the subject of today's post. In article <0c0CSim00UhBI0qUIv@andrew.cmu.edu> mc4c+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Choi) writes: >For all those out there who are convinced that TRH is the Word when it >comes to the notebook market, and that Atari knows what the hell is >going on on the other side of their closed eyelids, please read on: > >Zeos Notebook PC >12mhz 286, 2"x12"x10", 1 meg RAM, backlit VGA, and ext. vid. port, 20 >Meg HDD, 1.44 meg floppy, $1995. > >Compaq LTE >20MHz 386, 7 I/O ports, 30 /60 meg HDD, 3 meg RAM, 1.44 meg floppy > >Dataworld NS 320SX >386sx, VGA with ext. vid., 2 meg RAM, 20 meg drive > >Others include the Northgate slimline, and the Austin sx, with standard >2 meg RAM. These machines have stated weights of under 7 lbs, including >the battery charger. I doubt the notebook ST wieght includes the >charger. Without the charger, they weigh in less than 6 lbs. Granted >they weigh a bit more than the ST notebok, but do NOT tell me that they A *bit* more?! The Atari notebooks are supposed to weigh about 1 kg. The machines you list weigh more than *twice* as much as the Ataris, even without the charger, and are more than *double* the volume (the Ataris are supposed to be about 1" thick). And it doesn't stop there. These machines have a battery life of 2-3 hours with "average" use, dropping to about 1.5 hours with moderate disk access. So they're practically useless as true portables unless you carry along an extra battery pack or two along with the charger, rounding things out at about *3-4 times* the weight and *triple* the volume of the Ataris. And these machines are state-of-the-art for so- called DOS "notebooks". (BTW, I don't suppose you'd care to tell other net readers how much the Compaq LTE will lighten their wallets.) >are figments of my imagination, or that there are no machines out there >with both a hard drive and a floppy, as the guru TRH has stated. There I told you in email that you and TRH are working with different conceptions of "notebook". Your definition is approximately: "Not much bigger/heavier than the abridged version of the Oxford English Dictionary." His is: "Not much bigger/heavier than a notebook." For TRH's definition, he's right; there are currently no machines that fit the latter description with both a hard drive and standard 1.44 meg floppy, even when you don't include the charger and extra batteries. >are others that are lighter, and are closer to the ST notebook, but I >have better things to do than to reread piles of magazines just to >vindicate my position against the cries of the ignorant. I think I'll [Translation: "I was wrong; I haven't been able to locate any machines which come anywhere close to Atari's size and weight specs with all of the features that I was asking for."] C'mon Mark, put up or shut up. If you have better things to do than re-read piles of magazines in an effort to vindicate your position, at least you could do us the courtesy of finding something better to do than hanging out your own ignorance for public display. TRH was right, I'm afraid: You don't know what-in-the-fuck-you're-talking- about. Nothing wrong with that; all of us are ignorant about lots of things, and the net is an ideal forum for learning from others and thus curing our ignorance. You, however, had the unconscionably bad taste to publicly insult both Atari Corp. and TRH based on your ignorance. (You do recall, don't you, the post in which you suggested that TRH's machines had been deliberately crippled in an effort to sell more STacys? It was the one that prompted his original vituperous reply.) And you continue to do so, in the most obnoxious way possible. The gracious thing to do, I think, would be to apologize. Barring that, I suggest that you desist lest you make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have. Regards, BBB -- Bob Bright <bright@ccu.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Philosophy University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Man R3T 2N2 (204) 474-9105