poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) (04/04/91)
The April UNIX World has an advertisement for the SONY NEWS 3250 laptop, which they say runs UNIX, X windows etc., comes with 8-32MB RAM and either a 240 or a 406MB hard drive, 1120x780 display, and ethernet, SCSI, serial and parallel ports. It sounds just wonderful, though the fact that they don't mention the price suggests it isn't cheap. Has anyone seen one of these? Bill
6600spam@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Tom Maynard) (04/04/91)
In article <18525@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes: >The April UNIX World has an advertisement for the SONY NEWS 3250 >laptop, which they say runs UNIX, X windows etc., comes with 8-32MB >RAM and either a 240 or a 406MB hard drive, 1120x780 display, and >ethernet, SCSI, serial and parallel ports. It sounds just wonderful, >though the fact that they don't mention the price suggests it isn't >cheap. Has anyone seen one of these? >Bill -- I haven't SEEN one, but there's a summary of the machine in the March issue of BYTE. It ain't no stinkin' laptop, though: 18 pounds, no battery (ac current only), and it sells for 10K base. ($11,900 with the 406M drive!)... They refer to it as a "portable workstation". Plugs right in to the ethernet, and has plenty o' power. However, the price and weight put it in the same category as the Mac Portable.. (Sorry, low blow!) --TMaynard 6600spam@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu Bio geek at large...
mto@harvey.gte.com (Tamer Ozsu) (04/05/91)
In article <18525@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes: >The April UNIX World has an advertisement for the SONY NEWS 3250 >laptop, which they say runs UNIX, X windows etc., comes with 8-32MB >RAM and either a 240 or a 406MB hard drive, 1120x780 display, and >ethernet, SCSI, serial and parallel ports. It sounds just wonderful, >though the fact that they don't mention the price suggests it isn't >cheap. Has anyone seen one of these? Yes, I've seen it. SONY guys gave a demo here at GTE Labs a while ago. So the machine is real and not vaporvare. It does indeed run Unix, X windows, etc and looked like it was solidly built. I, for one, was quite impressed with it. I can't remember the price right now, though, but I believe they mentioned an academic discount, which may be important for some. The machine requires AC power, however. ==Tamer -- M. Tamer Ozsu Telephone: (617) 466-2098 GTE Laboratories Fax: (617) 290-0628 40 Sylvan Road Internet: mto@gte.com Waltham, MA 02254
steven@cwi.nl (Steven Pemberton) (04/05/91)
In article <18525@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes: >The April UNIX World has an advertisement for the SONY NEWS 3250 >laptop, which they say runs UNIX, X windows etc., comes with 8-32MB >RAM and either a 240 or a 406MB hard drive, 1120x780 display, and >ethernet, SCSI, serial and parallel ports. It sounds just wonderful, >though the fact that they don't mention the price suggests it isn't >cheap. Has anyone seen one of these? I've used one for several days, and I liked it a lot: fast, good implementation of Unix, with NFS and SLIP. It's not a laptop, it's a portable; it's heavy for a lot of carrying around; mains only. The LCD is OK: mono, fast, reasonable reading angle. A lot of ghosting, but experimenting with xsetroot reduces this to a usable level. I used the machine to give a demo at a conference, and with a big font it was quite acceptable for a group of 20 or so people to be able to see what I was doing. The price they were quoting (here in the Netherlands) was quite reasonable compared to what we pay for other types of workstations. It would make a great home machine! Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam; steven@cwi.nl "Let us go then you and I/while the night is laid out against the sky/like a smear of mustard on an old pork pie" Nice poem Tom. I have ideas for changes though, why not come over? - Ezra
jonathan@cs.pitt.edu (Jonathan Eunice) (04/07/91)
Tom Maynard writes: Bill Poser writes: >The April UNIX World has an advertisement for the SONY NEWS 3250 >laptop, which they say runs UNIX, X windows etc., comes with 8-32MB >RAM and either a 240 or a 406MB hard drive, 1120x780 display, and >ethernet, SCSI, serial and parallel ports. It sounds just wonderful, >though the fact that they don't mention the price suggests it isn't >cheap. Has anyone seen one of these? -- I haven't SEEN one, but there's a summary of the machine in the March issue of BYTE. It ain't no stinkin' laptop, though: 18 pounds, no battery (ac current only), and it sells for 10K base. ($11,900 with the 406M drive!)... They refer to it as a "portable workstation". Plugs right in to the ethernet, and has plenty o' power. However, the price and weight put it in the same category as the Mac Portable.. (Sorry, low blow!) Yep, I've seen it running. Very sexy, except the portability is minimal. Though it is probably the smallest thing you can get SVr4 onto, even your favorite WWF character will consider it a luggable. The screen is small (11"), though the resolution is good. I saw document processing software running (FrameMaker, I believe), and it was readable. Not sure how prolonged reading of those small fonts would fare, though.
franks@synoptics.com (Frank Stutzman) (04/10/91)
|> The screen is small (11"), though the resolution is good. I saw |> document processing software running (FrameMaker, I believe), and it |> was readable. Not sure how prolonged reading of those small fonts |> would fare, though. The Connecting Point Store in Palo Alto had one the other weekend when I dropped in. They were pretty clueless about it (they normally deal with ms-dos laptops), but allowed me to wail away on it. Comments on its portablity are correct. This puppy is about as portable as your average bank vault (at least for me, but then again I'm no relative of Charles Atlas). The screen is ok, but I've seen better on other laptops. drift on... Wanna see something great? Go find one of the new HP lan analazers (I forget the model number), but its got a Sharp flat panel display (essentially a flat screen TV) on it. Great color and resolution and still quite small. The downside is that Sharp is selling these to HP at something like $3500 apiece (and that's in volume). Dunno where else you could find one other than the HP lan analyzer, which is ` really a ms-dos machine with extra lan hardware. drift off It seems to be fairly complete as far as softare: system V R4, NFS, X X windows. Both mwm and twm were there for window managers (it seems that by default it comes up with twm, I suspect to give a better demo as mwm tends to be a pig). X ran ok, but when I started loading up the system, you really could watch the the context switches between processes (now that may have actually been the X server doing window updates, I'm not sure). It came with a three button mouse and all the connectivity that you could want (ok, so I think that an ethernet port is all anybody needs). The processor is a mips R3000 and I don't rememeber how much memory it had or the disk size (although it must be a fairly fast disk, as I loaded it to the point of forcing it to swap processes and it performed probably as well as the sparc on my desk). Anyway I worked with for about 30 minutes and I'd buy one if 1) I was much richer 2) I was of heroic enough size to lug it around and 3) I really needed a portable unix machine (maybe someday) |==========================================================================| |Frank Stutzman | The network is the computer | |SynOptics, Communcations, Inc | The T-connector is the network | |Santa Clara, Ca | The computer is a T-connector? | |franks@synoptics.com | | |==========================================================================|
caserta@athena.mit.edu (Francesco Caserta) (04/12/91)
Since we are in the topic, is there a list discussing specifically Sony News machines? I couldn't find it at my site. Thanks. Francesco Caserta