nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) (01/17/90)
I am considering buying a laptop mainly for word processing and light-duty computing/software development. For comparison I have a Leading Edge Model 'D' (7.5 MHz 8088) at home which seems entirely powerful enough for my needs. I've looked at a number of laptops and the biggest problem I have with most of them is the display: I find the blue or bluish-green displays to be hard on my eyes and fatiguing to look upon for long. Granted, these are a big improvement over the non-supertwist LCD displays of the Tandy 100 days with their limited viewing angle and poor contrast. But I've also seen much better black-on-white LCD displays on the higher-end 80286 machines. Trouble is that these machines are bigger and heavier than what I want, much more expensive, and really overkill for my needs. So the question is this: Why do they bundle the nice displays only with the heavy, expensive machines? Does anyone offer a black-on-white display on a lighter, cheaper, lower-power machine? If so, who? If not, why not? ---Peter PS-- While I was looking I saw a Packard Bell 286 laptop with a 20 Meg hard drive and the B+W display at Lechmere's in NH (a local discount chain) for $1995. This is about a *thousand* dollars cheaper than any other 286 laptop I've seen locally and they said that this was their regular price, not a closeout or promotion. The machine looked a lot like the Sharp but the equivalent Sharp in a nearby store was $3200. Anybody know anything about Packard Bell, the machine or the company? Thanks!