ravi@xanadu.com (Ravi Pandya) (05/07/91)
With several dozen different 386sx notebooks out there, why are they all almost identical? Why isn't some manufacturer getting the idea that they should look for a niche that twenty other companies aren't already going for? I can find essentially one machine which fits each of my major requirements/desires, and none that meets them all: OVER 10 Mb RAM -- only the Tandon (and its OEMs) does this, and only Tandon uses *industry*standard* memory expansion that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I could expand it to 16Mb for one third the cost of 4Mb for a Compaq LTE 386s (admittedly an extreme example). Are laptop manufacturers going to have to learn all over again the sense of using standard SIMMs instead of expensive proprietary schemes? I thought we'd been through this once with the desktop manufacturers. Or are we simply at the beginning of the formation of another de facto standard? What might it turn out to be? BUILT-IN POINTING DEVICE -- only the Olivetti, with its touch pad. Everyone is touting 386sx notebooks as portable Windows machines, yet no one is delivering them with a pointing device. The Microsoft/ Logitech alternative is ugly, awkward, and inconvenient. You have to remove it when you close the case, and then you have another piece to carry, along with a bunch of tangled cables. The laptop store down the street has a tiny, very precise 1/4" trackball that would take up maybe 0.5 cubic inches if it were built-in. The Outbound Mac portable has the Isopoint, which I've found to be very useable, and you never have to take your hands off the keyboard. Some manufacturer should give these a try. I suspect they're all sitting on their hands waiting to see what somebody else does, and whether it sells. That somebody else may make a pile of money. EXTERNAL FLOPPY -- only the Commax Ultrathin. Of all the 386sx notebooks, it is by far the lightest (4 lbs), and smallest (8.25" x 10.25" x 1.25"). An external floppy drive is included in the price. I rarely need a floppy, and I'd be happy to leave the external drive on my desk and carry 2 lbs less under my arm. If the Commax could be expanded beyond 4Mb, and had a coprocessor socket, I'd buy it instantly. Isn't portability what it's all about? Or was the market research on the Sharp 6220 so compelling that no one thinks they can sell one without a built-in floppy? I suspect that there are simply two segments - people who want everything in one box to carry around all the time, and people who want to carry around as little as possible. Doesn't it make sense to serve one market better, at the expense of the other, and establish a niche? Furthermore, I suspect a clever industrial designer could figure out how to make a detachable floppy with a clamping connector so that it could be carried with the main unit. A 9600 baud MNP/v.42bis internal modem would also be nice -- I don't know of anyone who offers that. However, I can stand to have an external pocket modem, since I would have to be tethered to a phone anyway. I suspect I may end up going with the Tandon, since I can't get my work done with less memory, and I can suffer with an awkward trackball and some extra weight. On the other hand, I may just wait and see if something better turns up... --ravi Ravi Pandya Xanadu Operating Company 550 California Avenue Suite 101 Palo Alto, CA 94306 415 856 4112 ext 122 415 856 2251 fax ravi@xanadu.com
phr@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) (05/07/91)
OVER 10 Mb RAM -- only the Tandon (and its OEMs) does this, and only
Tandon uses *industry*standard* memory expansion that doesn't cost an
arm and a leg. I could expand it to 16Mb for one third the cost of 4Mb
for a Compaq LTE 386s (admittedly an extreme example). Are laptop
manufacturers going to have to learn all over again the sense of using
standard SIMMs instead of expensive proprietary schemes? I thought
Check out the Dataworld machine advertised in the current laptop rags.
It uses standard simms (can take 16 meg), runs at 20 mhz, and uses
standard D-size 4AH nicads that don't cost an arm and a leg. It's
the only such machine I know of to use standard batteries instead
of expensive proprietary schemes. It does, however, have a floppy.
I believe that standard simms use more battery power than at least
some of the expensive memory modules used by some laptop vendors.
I really love my Toshiba T1000's ability to retain RAM data for
several weeks on a battery charge when the rest of the machine
is powered off. (Configuring the battery-backed-up ram as a
ramdisk means never needing to access the floppy). I don't know
of any 386 notebook computers with that feature except maybe
the T2000SX, which is very expensive.anthony@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber) (05/08/91)
In article <1991May7.000748.18429@xanadu.com> ravi@xanadu.com (Ravi Pandya) writes: >With several dozen different 386sx notebooks out there, why are they >all almost identical? Why isn't some manufacturer getting the idea Well, sometimes they *are* identical. The DataWorld 386sx notbook that is mentioned in a later article is basicly the Tandon laptop. Companys such as Sharp, Sanyo, TI, Everex, CompuAdd, Zeos and others sell only a couple different laptops. There may only be four or five truly unique 386sx notebooks on the market right now. The others are just relabed perhaps with some extra support or software. >for a Compaq LTE 386s (admittedly an extreme example). Are laptop >manufacturers going to have to learn all over again the sense of using >standard SIMMs instead of expensive proprietary schemes? I thought >we'd been through this once with the desktop manufacturers. Or are we >simply at the beginning of the formation of another de facto standard? >What might it turn out to be? The PCMCIA / JEIDA memory card standard looks pretty good. These are the cards used in the Poquet PC and the HP-95LX. They support RAM, ROM, and other devices. This could be the memory standard that everyone will be using on all peronsal computers in 10 years. >EXTERNAL FLOPPY -- only the Commax Ultrathin. Of all the 386sx >notebooks, it is by far the lightest (4 lbs), and smallest (8.25" x >10.25" x 1.25"). An external floppy drive is included in the price. I The Spark Snap 1+1, Zenith Minisport HD, and Toshiba T1000XE also don't have a floppy drive, and have just a hard drive or lots of RAM to cut down on weight and size. The three major handheld MS-DOS machines: the Atari Portfolio, Poquet PC and the brand new Hewlett-Packet HP-95LX are all not much bigger than a 3.5" floppy drive and of course have no built-in floppy. > Ravi Pandya > Xanadu Operating Company > 550 California Avenue > Suite 101 > Palo Alto, CA 94306 > 415 856 4112 ext 122 > 415 856 2251 fax > ravi@xanadu.com Hey, what's the latest on Xanadu, any release dates? :-) -- <-:(= Anthony Stieber anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony Psion Mailing List subscriber submissions psion ----------\ the (human) moderator psion-owner -------+--@csd4.csd.uwm.edu subscriptions and file requests psion-request ----/
laird@think.com (Laird Popkin) (05/09/91)
In article <1991May7.000748.18429@xanadu.com> ravi@xanadu.com (Ravi Pandya) writes: >With several dozen different 386sx notebooks out there, why are they >all almost identical? Why isn't some manufacturer getting the idea >that they should look for a niche that twenty other companies aren't >already going for? I can find essentially one machine which fits each >of my major requirements/desires, and none that meets them all: > >OVER 10 Mb RAM -- only the Tandon (and its OEMs) does this, and only >Tandon uses *industry*standard* memory expansion that doesn't cost an >arm and a leg. I could expand it to 16Mb for one third the cost of 4Mb >for a Compaq LTE 386s (admittedly an extreme example). Are laptop >manufacturers going to have to learn all over again the sense of using >standard SIMMs instead of expensive proprietary schemes? I thought >we'd been through this once with the desktop manufacturers. Or are we >simply at the beginning of the formation of another de facto standard? >What might it turn out to be? Right now, standard SIMMS are all DRAM, whereas the ultra-low power portable computers use wither SRAM or pseudo-SRAM. It would be nice if SRAM or p-SRAM started appearing on standard SIMMs, since it would then become more of an end-user commodity. Of course the SIMM would have to be slightly different, to keep people from frying their RAM or motherboards... >BUILT-IN POINTING DEVICE -- only the Olivetti, with its touch pad. >Everyone is touting 386sx notebooks as portable Windows machines, yet >no one is delivering them with a pointing device. The Microsoft/ >Logitech alternative is ugly, awkward, and inconvenient. You have to >remove it when you close the case, and then you have another piece to >carry, along with a bunch of tangled cables. The laptop store down the >street has a tiny, very precise 1/4" trackball that would take up >maybe 0.5 cubic inches if it were built-in. The Outbound Mac portable >has the Isopoint, which I've found to be very useable, and you never >have to take your hands off the keyboard. Some manufacturer should >give these a try. I suspect they're all sitting on their hands waiting >to see what somebody else does, and whether it sells. That somebody >else may make a pile of money. There are a number of laptop computers with pointing devices built in. THe Portable Macintosh has a trackball built into it's keyboard. There is a GRID laptop with what they claim is an "improved" Isopoint(TM). There are also laptops with touchpads as pointing devices, such as the M100 and M200 from Psion, and I remember a laptop with a touchpad being described in _great_ detail in Byte back in '84 or so. >EXTERNAL FLOPPY -- only the Commax Ultrathin. Of all the 386sx >notebooks, it is by far the lightest (4 lbs), and smallest (8.25" x >10.25" x 1.25"). An external floppy drive is included in the price. I >rarely need a floppy, and I'd be happy to leave the external drive on >my desk and carry 2 lbs less under my arm. If the Commax could be >expanded beyond 4Mb, and had a coprocessor socket, I'd buy it >instantly. Isn't portability what it's all about? Or was the market >research on the Sharp 6220 so compelling that no one thinks they can >sell one without a built-in floppy? I suspect that there are simply >two segments - people who want everything in one box to carry around >all the time, and people who want to carry around as little as >possible. Doesn't it make sense to serve one market better, at the >expense of the other, and establish a niche? Furthermore, I suspect a >clever industrial designer could figure out how to make a detachable >floppy with a clamping connector so that it could be carried with the >main unit. I think that the current logic is that the '386 draws so much power that it doesn't make sense to try to save a little power by eliminating the floppy drive, and that anyone buying a '386 is a "power user" would would want a floppy drive. Personally, I agree with you -- I'd be happy to buy a portable with nothing but a hard drive and an ethernet port and a fast serial port for LapLinking. >A 9600 baud MNP/v.42bis internal modem would also be nice -- I don't >know of anyone who offers that. However, I can stand to have an >external pocket modem, since I would have to be tethered to a phone >anyway. > >I suspect I may end up going with the Tandon, since I can't get my >work done with less memory, and I can suffer with an awkward trackball >and some extra weight. On the other hand, I may just wait and see if >something better turns up... > --ravi IF you don't mind waiting, there should be some fantastic PenPoint and PenWindows machines coming out over the next few months. It's only money, right? - Laird Popkin, Thinking Machines Connection Machine: Massively parallel supercomputer. Also a cool black cube with more blinking lights than you can shake a stick at.
pastor@PRC.Unisys.COM (Jon Pastor) (05/10/91)
> Check out the Dataworld machine advertised in the current laptop rags. Um, the Dataworld machine is a Tandon OEM... > It ... uses > standard D-size 4AH nicads that don't cost an arm and a leg. It's > the only such machine I know of to use standard batteries instead > of expensive proprietary schemes. Um, according to the guy at Dataworld, they wanted it to use standard D-size nicads, and you can use them if you don't mind real short battery life. I notice that you specified 4AH nicads -- are they really commonly available and cheap?
phr@monsoon.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin) (05/12/91)
To: In article <17577@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> pastor@PRC.Unisys.COM (Jon Pastor) writes: > Check out the Dataworld machine advertised in the current laptop rags. Um, the Dataworld machine is a Tandon OEM... If this means the Tandon also can use D nicads, that's great! > It ... uses > standard D-size 4AH nicads that don't cost an arm and a leg. It's > the only such machine I know of to use standard batteries instead > of expensive proprietary schemes. Um, according to the guy at Dataworld, they wanted it to use standard D-size nicads, and you can use them if you don't mind real short battery life. I notice that you specified 4AH nicads -- are they really commonly available and cheap? "Standard" D-size nicads are really sub-C (1.2 AH) nicads in a D size shell. You can get 4AH D nicads at Radio Shack for about $8 each. I believe 4.5AH and even 5AH D nicads are available but I'm not sure or at what price. I do know that 750 mAH AA nicads are more than 5 times as expensive as 500maH ones though this may change.