info-terms (02/13/83)
>From @MIT-MC:X.GYRO@MIT-MC Sun Feb 13 08:02:02 1983
Received: from UCBARPA.BERKELEY.ARPA by UCBVAX.BERKELEY.ARPA (3.300 [1/17/83])
id AA14706; 13 Feb 83 08:02:02 PST (Sun)
Received: by UCBVAX.BERKELEY.ARPA (3.300 [1/17/83])
id AA14714; 13 Feb 83 08:02:39 PST (Sun)
Sender: X.GYRO@MIT-OZ
To: "King@Kestrel"@ml
Cc: info-terms@mc
In-Reply-To: Msg of 10 Jan 1983 17:52-EST from Richard M. King <KING at KESTREL>
I saw this demoed recently and was not impressed. It does indeed have
66 lines, but the display quality is marginal -- looks like they made
a bad choice of anti-glare screen. We put it side by side with a
(horizontal format) Ann Arbor Ambassador at 60 lines, and the two were
about equally readable, though their imperfections were completely
different. The keyboard has a slightly better feel than the
Ambassador's, but lacks n-key rollover. Also, no one has written meta
key roms for it.
Perhaps the worst problem is that, unlike the Ambassador, it only has
one character size, so people who prefer readability to density are
out of luck.
If it were cheaper than the Ambassador I might be hard pressed to make
a choice between the two, but since it's $1700 I wouldn't even
consider it.
And a damn shame it is, too, since it looked from their literature
that somebody had *finally* build the Right Terminal (for which I
would gladly fork over $1700).
Funny how all these people who are into "ergonomics" (e.g. the 4000
has a detachable keyboard with palm rest, which I really like) forget
that fundamental terminal ergonomics requires a readable (and, for
many applications, dense -- at least 48x80) display and a typeable
keyboard (which *requires* n-key rollover). Oh well...
-- Scott Layson