mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) (10/15/89)
Well, we got our Portable (the third on campus!) yesterday, and after
having played with it for a while, here's my $.02 worth.
Obviously it's cool. The screen is everything it's cracked up to be.
At this moment, I'm about 10 feet away from it at a diagonal, and I can
still see what's on the display. However, the images cast shadows, and this
can get annoying after a while.
The keyboard is a Mac keyboard. So if you like the Mac keyboard, you'll
like typing on the Portable. If you hate the Mac keyboard, well...
The trackball is the weakest point on the portable. Let's face it. It's
not a replacement for the mouse. While I could move around ok, and the nice
big bar of a button is nice, it's still rather awkward. My contention is
that it's because the hand motions to use the trackball is backwards from
what you're used to on the mouse. Think about it. On the mouse, you click
with one of your fingers, and you kinda of guide it around with your thumb.
(At least I do.) On a trackball, it's backwards. You move the ball around
with your fingers, and you click with your thumb. The absolute worse thing
to try to do with the trackball: try selecting something from a heirarchical
menu. Go ahead. How many times did it take y'all to get the right item?
Get the idea?
The floppy drive gave out on us today. I don't know if this is something
particular to our machine (we DID lug it around quite a bit) or if it's
something affecting the entire batch...
The other fun thing was seeing how many programs try to use Color QuickDraw
on it because the portable has a higher machine number than a Mac II when
_SysEnvirons is called. The one that gave us the biggest headache was
NCSA Telnet 2.3. It's really odd how it works. It tries to make a color
window and it fails, and it comes back with a 'Host not responding' message.
A few of us wound up patching out some of the color routines that get called,
and it worked fine.
So, what's my final verdict? Well, if you INSIST on taking a Macintosh
with you on the run, the Portable's good enough. Me, I'd rather stay at my
desk and use my IIx with 5 megs of RAM, a 13" color monitor, a 19" black and
white monitor, and an EtherNet connection. (So I'm spoiled... :)
_______________________________________________________________________________
Dean Yu | E-mail: mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu
Self-declared License Czar | Real-mail: Dean Yu
University of Michigan | 909 Church St
Computer Aided Engineering Network | Apt C
INCLUDE 'Disclaimers.a' | Ann Arbor, MI 48104
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (10/16/89)
In article <463b736d.1285f@maize.engin.umich.edu>, mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) writes: > The other fun thing was seeing how many programs try to use Color QuickDraw > on it because the portable has a higher machine number than a Mac II when > _SysEnvirons is called. The one that gave us the biggest headache was > NCSA Telnet 2.3. Actually, Telnet 2.3 doesn't call the Pallette Manager because the machine number is greater than a Mac II--it calls it on every machine! The thing is, this doesn't cause an error on a Mac Plus or SE, so no one ever noticed the bug... -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> "Tobacco is the only drug in America that will kill you if it's taken as directed." --Dr. C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General
kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (10/17/89)
In article <463b736d.1285f@maize.engin.umich.edu> mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) writes:
< The trackball is the weakest point on the portable. Let's face it. It's
<not a replacement for the mouse. While I could move around ok, and the nice
<big bar of a button is nice, it's still rather awkward.
I used a trackball for quite a while and got used to how they work, but the
trackball on our "trial for one day" portable was just too sloppy. The
tiniest movement sends the cursor flying. Try drawing two boxes and lining
them up. You can't remove your hand from the trackball without changing the
size of the box.
Also, I really miss the extended keyboard, so to make it useful, we'd have
to get the numeric keypad to restore some of that functionality. Also, the
second meg of memory would be necessary to run current drawing programs
that eat up nearly a meg for themselves.
We may still get one because we have to go to different systems and
different buildings to collect data for the manuals. It's more efficient
to write and draw right there than to handwrite and go back to your system
trying to make sense of your notes.
Shirley Kehrmjkobb@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Michael J Kobb) (10/19/89)
In article <119138@felix.UUCP> kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) writes: >I used a trackball for quite a while and got used to how they work, but the >trackball on our "trial for one day" portable was just too sloppy. The >tiniest movement sends the cursor flying. Try drawing two boxes and lining >them up. You can't remove your hand from the trackball without changing the >size of the box. Well, I've played around with the Portable in the Microcomputer Center here for awhile, and I didn't find there to be any real trouble with the trackball. It's sensitivity is controllable in the Control Panel with the Mouse CDEV, just as with a mouse. I actually turned up the sensitivity to full to make it easier to position objects without having to remove the hand from the trackball to gain more rotations. There may be machine-to-machine variations, though. My only complaint with this beast so far is that there's a dead pixel on the display. It's just kind of light grey and doesn't turn black when it should. Too bad. Question: How much memory can be added to this beastie? If it's really stuck at 2048K, then somebody made a really big mistake. I couldn't even open two applications under MultiFinder with 2M! 2.5 seems to be the bare minimum for MF. --Mike Disclaimer: I think that disclaimers are an incredibly sad statement about our society. Nonetheless, nothing that I say can or should be construed as having been said by anyone. Ever.