jkrump@maximo.enet.dec.com (John Krumpotick) (04/10/91)
I'm considering getting a low-end laptop. I'm confident that a low end modle will do. What follows are what I could live with as far as features go, plus a bunch of questions. I'll be doing mostly light word processing plus having a TSR of some kind for utilites. 80c88 should be fine. 640K preferably more. Do laptops generaly support EMS for whats above 640K? The low-end laptops seem to be CGA compatible displays. Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of? (Readability) Keyboard, how are they on the smaller machines? Do you like yours? Most of the lower-end stuff seems to be limited to 720K floppys. I'd prefer a 1.4Meg floppy, but I'd like to know how laptop owners feel about the 720K drives. Does this create a nuisance if you want to load up commercial software on 3 1/5" disks? That is do you need to transfer commercial software from 1.4Meg floppys on another machines drives for the laptops 720K drives or does enough commercial stuff come on 720K floppys that it can be used as is? If not can the low-end modles (like the TOSHIBA T1000) run a 1.4meg drive? Dual floppy capabilite would be a plus but not essential. I don't need a hard drive for what I'm going to be doing. Will it be usable for at least two hours? Is the battery easily swapped out? Can they be dropped without fear of a total catastrophe? Does the machine go from standby mode to powerup very quickly. I'd like something that would idle at low load to conserve batteries but doesn't require an annoying amount of time to get into action once the application software has been loaded. I'll be transfering files from the laptop to/from a RISC workstation at work. I don't have a PC at home but there is a 386 available where I work too. Basicaly the laptop should be a standalone item, thats why I'm concerned about being limited to a 720K drive. It should suffice as far as my data files go, but I need to be able to directly load any commercial software I might get if at all possible. As an example of what I'm interested in here is what I have recently seen advertised: SHARP MZ-100 8088 processor; 640K ram, 1.6meg supported Dual 720K floppys; 640 x 400 display (CGA?) Serial & parallel ports; Does anyone have one of these, judging from the price in the add it must be a discontinued model. Well thanks for any help, sorry this was such a long post.