mcclaren@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Tim McClarren) (08/10/89)
In my blissful ignorance, I turn to the infinite knowledge base of the net: My mother is visually impaired, but is going to be doing some admin. work for a computer lab for the visually impaired at the community college in our area. She needs a computer for home. We've decided that what we want is a Mac simply for the fact that Apple packages things like Easy Access and CloseView with the system (hooray Apple), which IBM (or third-party vendors) turn into hardware products and sell for $2500+. I have a few alternatives...I could buy the Mac Plus, and get an external (Radius) monitor for it, and I imagine the cost of this system to be around $2800. I'm afraid that the Plus will be discontinued soon. I could buy an SE and get a little more "bang" but this ups the system price to around $3000 or a little more. Or, we could go straight to a IIcx and just buy a large monitor. So, here are my questions: What sort of monitors (B/W) should I be looking at for these systems (external for SE, main mon. on IIcx, with whatever video card)? It should be at least 14", preferably 19". Color is much too expensive. In the case of the IIcx, I'd like to get a 45+M cap. hard drive, pref. Miniscribe or Quantam. Does anyone know what models (#'s) I'd be looking at? I'm hearing a lot of complaints about Seagate. And, of course, in the IIcx it'd hafta be 3.5". If we purchased an SE, I'd get the two floppy model and an ext. hard drive. I will most likely purchase either the DataDesk 101 keyboard or I think a keyboard marketed by Ehman, in either case. Does anyone have any exp. with these? I (personally) am trying to convince the gentleman in charge of purchasing machines for the lab to seriously consider the Macintosh. He's flown to CA and GA to talk with IBMers, and has only considered IBM equipment, for which the is little (NIL) handicapped support. I'd like to see them purchase a dozen IIcx's and put them on AppleTalk, with large screens. They should be able to get 40% off from Apple, as do most other Univ.. Has anyone else had any experience with this? IBM (and third-party vendors), are not giving them a break in the least, and the total cost would be sig. more. They have no existing software base, so I cannot see why this gentleman remains so obstinate. There's nothing in this for me but to see the Lab buy equipment inexpensively that's easy to learn and use and will do what they want. Tim McClarren mcclaren@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu