Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!sunic!kth!draken!ianf
From: ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Portable Mac - why wait?
Summary: No big deal. 1300 grams of portable terminal magic
Keywords: editing ultra-light VT100 terminal alternative
Message-ID: <1570@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 7 Sep 89 02:42:14 GMT
Reply-To: ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman)
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 60


  Portable Mac - why wait?

  Having agonized a lot on the subject of the coming portable
  Macintosh I had to conclude that I might not be able to afford it
  for quite some time to come after its introduction (if any) in
  few weeks time, if ever.  Apple will without doubt price it on a par
  with demand which already seems huge and growing. Time to re-think
  the priorities and look for an alternative to my present needs
  for mobile, alphanumeric data entry...

      Before surveying the market I drew up a list of minimum
  requirements for said "portable-Macintosh"-replacement: as small
  and light as possible (certainly less than the rumoured more-or-
  less ordinary-size transportable Mac), a good quality keyboard,
  fullsize screen (anything less than 20 lines out of the question),
  ambient-light-readable screen (I consider the Toshiba 1000's LCD
  one close to unreadable), a built-in editor capable of cut-and-
  paste among few memory-resident, smallish documents, a serial
  port for uploading locally composed text to a Mac and, hopefully,
  an integral 2400 bps modem.  I didn't care about battery operation -
  I'd gladly give it up in exchange for any of the other functions.

      In short - I'd rather have a truly portable editing terminal
  AND a stationary Mac than have to schlepp around a single piece of
  much heavier hardware.  An intelligent terminal would do quite nicely,
  thank you.

      Allthough I did not have great hopes of finding something that
  might fit the bill I managed to uncover 5 different models of full
  QWERTY, portable VT100-terminal equipment. Two of these were just
  that - pure terminals with no local processing capability of any
  kind.  The other three that nominally came close to my needs were
  the NEC UltraLight, the Z88 Cambridge Computer and the recently
  previewed but not-yet available Zenith MinisPort (BYTE/ August) .

      The NEC, while a nice machine in its own right, was just a
  shade too expensive to be taken under further consideration. The
  MinisPort will probably cost even more (when it becomes available)
  on account of its unique mini-floppy drive. The Z88 unfortunately
  did not have quite the kind of display nor the quality keyboard
  that I could find acceptable.  Moreover, it had the added dis-
  advantage of being advertised by Jerry Pournelle ;-)

      However, in the course of my research I managed to discover
  still another brand new product that looks very promising indeed:
  an ultra-light, fullsize keyboard/ fullsize (back-lit) screen
  editing terminal with an internal modem, weighting less than 3
  pounds!

      Granted, a terminal, no matter how portable it might be, is
  not a Mac. This one, however, might just be the way to go for
  hassle-free recording of "random thoughts on the go" for later
  transfer into the stationary Macs (or other) computers.  As it
  is of interest also to non-Mac users I posted a review of it in
  comp.terminals.  Look for the "MINEC 1000 portable terminal review."


-- 
  !f/ Ian Feldman/ ianf@nada.kth.se/ ianf@sekth.bitnet