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From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops
Subject: Re: Market Study for laptops and your input?
Message-ID: <11050@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 20 Feb 90 08:04:50 GMT
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The discussion so far seems really focused on PC-Clones. I've ordered a machine
that I expect to be delivered in about two weeks. It weighs 15 pounds, so it's
not gonna be the most comfortable on a lap, but it packs a lot of punch.
4 meg of memory, 40 meg hard drive, 640x400 LCD display with external video
connector. The machine will drive both the LCD and an external monochrome
monitor simultaneously; the LCD cuts out if you plug in a color monitor.
The keyboard is full-sized, with separate smaller pads for 10 function keys
and the cursor pad, and a small 2-button trackball. The thing has a port for
128K ROM cartridges, a bidirectional centronics-style parallel port, rs232
port, midi ports, external floppy drive port, and SCSI/DMA port. (A 720K
3-1/2" floppy drive is also present.) The standard processor is an 8 MHz
68000. (I'll be upgrading mine to 16MHz.) 

The system I just described lists for $2895, an Atari STACY-4. Folks have
been going crazy for it as a portable Mac, since the Mac emulator is only
$250, but it also can run one of several PC/MSDOS emulators as well. I
intend to use this mainly as an ST, though, one that I can easily take to
my various offices without having to worry about lugging other peripherals
for. There aren't any high-speed networking interfaces onboard, but you can
get ethernet and localtalk cards that hang off the DMA port. You can also
get a PC-on-a-card that hangs off the DMA port, and get to ethernet from there.
Data transfer between ST and PC modes is painless, since the ST uses the
MSDOS filesystem structure.
--
  -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan