willis@violet.berkeley.edu (Willis Johnson) (01/10/90)
I recently borrowed a GRID laptop (from the GRID salesman) and did some serious pounding on it. Our organization was considering buying about 100 of them for outdoor use, so I wanted to see how sturdy it was... I had the 286/20MEG gas plasma model. I tested LOTUS 2.01, LOTUS 3, Wordperfect 5.0, Surpass, Procomm on it. All worked fine except LOTUS 3, which I couldn't get to recognize its 2 meg of RAM. The keyboard was cramped, but not too difficult to get used to. I definitely recommend against this keyboard for experienced WordPerfect users, since using some of the shifted function keys requires holding down *three* keys at once. The built-in 2400 baud modem worked fine and appears to be Hayes AT compatible. I also tested the acoustic coupler, a little box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, which plugs into the modular phone jack on the back of the unit and is held by a tiny strap to the phone receiver. It worked as well as any acoustic coupler I've every tried -- quite well but was a little clunky. I didn't test the radio interface myself, but a colleague did and told me that it works fine. You just slide the radio adapter into the ad-on slot in the back of the unit. The pounding: I checked the unit as luggage in its GRID-made padded case and flew to Europe with it. No damage, and just as well, since the sturdiness comes at the expense of several pounds of thick magnesium. The unit is really too heavy to carry around unless you're a body builder. While in Europe I plugged it directly into the various local currents. Although the specs and GRID tech support had told me that the power supply would convert anything I didn't believe THAT until I saw it. It worked perfectly. It continued to work perfectly through all of the rough treatment of the return home, and for the final test I dropped it from a height of four feet without the case (i.e., just the laptop) onto a carpeted office floor. No problems! Cons: It's expensive, about $5000 for the 286 model. It's very heavy. The battery pack lasts only about an hour (the salesman insisted that it would last for two hours, but I couldn't get it to last more than about 50 minutes). We decided to buy them. No, I'm not connected, etc.... Willis Johnson willis@violet.berkeley.edu