gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (12/14/84)
I asked: > I'm surprised that nobody has commented on the Data General/One here. > ... What's the scoop? Can you read the sucker all day or not? From: hplabs!hao!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!nichols (dennis nichols) We had a demo of the DG/One a few weeks ago. The display was nearly intolerable. Very sensitive to ambient light, viewing angle, etc. In real life it was not close to being as good as the photos you have seen. From: Jim Gillogly <decvax!randvax!jim> I played with one at a trade show last weekend. The screen was very very faint. I tried propping it up to get a better shot at it, but nothing helped much. The guy in the booth said it was a whole lot better in an office environment, but I won't trust it til I see it. I like the idea a whole lot, and the full screen is a great improvement. But I'll wait to buy one until they darken it up a little. From: decvax!cwruecmp!atvax!ncoast!bsa (Brandon Allbery) I "saw" one (One? :-) for about a minute, from an angle -- I hope you can adjust the "contrast" on it the way you can on Model 100's. It was a bit hard to read (again, I was at an angle to it, NOT in the position where a real user would be -- which counts a LOT on LCD displays). From: Tom Wadlow <taw@mordor.ARPA> I got a chance to play with Bob Frankston's DG/One on the plane back from the Sun User Group meeting. It still has a few problems but I was still impressed. As you say, it's biggest problem is the screen. I was wearing a dark sweater, which dropped the reflected light off the screen to almost nothing. With a light colored shirt, (cleverly simulated by a piece of blank paper), you can read the screen fairly well. Bob was thinking of hacking together a little diffused penlight to sit above the keyboard. Diffusion is necessary because the screen is *very* shiny, and makes a wonderful mirror with direct bright light on it. The thing is just the right size for working on an airplane though. It has 2 DSDD 3 1/2 inch drives, and will run for about 10 hours at 20% disk usage (meaning that your disks are spinning for 20% of the time). We ran EPSILION (an EMACS clone from Lugaru Software in Pittsburgh, PA) and it was quite fast and responsive. The keyboard is a little cramped, but you could get used to it. Even at it's best, the screen is very dim, though, so reading it for a long time could be a problem. Another problem is that they are pushing just a little too much current through the display addressing lines, in order to get the most screen contrast. Thus, when you draw a black bar, you slightly exceed the display threshold and get a "ghosting" effect (a faint black bar extending to the row and column drivers). Frankston showed me the Software Arts port of Spotlight (a desktop manager, like Sidekick from Borland) which draws a black box around the windows. This ghosting was fairly prominent, but easy enough to ignore. Waiting for a video display seems a little silly to me. If you want a desktop machine, buy one that was designed to be a desktop machine. This one is clearly a laptop portable. It's also just a little too expensive for the money, but it's on the right track. A slight improvement in display technology would remove most of my major objections. (Well, almost. I admit to being unhappy about any maching based around an 8086 architecture, but then, life's a bitch sometimes). --Tom From: ihnp4!utzoo!aesat!rwh (Russ Herman) I saw the machine at the recent Toronto computer show. Typical lighting for such, normal working levels from directly overhead 20+' ceilings. Couldn't read the display worth a damn. Pity.