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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1989)
CIIPIUI Things to consider when you buy a laptop By Donna Barron You see people lugging them through airports and clicking away at them around campus Once considered simply a tool for writers, those neat looking clamshell- type portables are popular among all types of com puter users In the last 12-IK months, the number of companies offering laptops has increased enor mously Hitachi. Mitsubishi and Compaq, for example, all re cently introduced laptop mod els In addition, such estab lished manufacturers as Toshiba, NEC and Zenith con tinue to announce new or en hanced versions on almost a daily basis As the variety and pow er of laptops has increased, many people have begun to question whether they really need to buy a full-sized portable or desktop computer to fulfill their computing needs Laptops generally weigh in somewhere between 9-14 pounds and are about 12 inches square, although there are some that are even smaller The pop ular Toshiba T101K), for exam ple, weighs only a little over 6 pounds A standard portable, on the other hand, can weigh 35 pounds or more- not exactly the kind of thing you'd want to drag to a lecture hull with you In addition, most laptops are designed to run on rechargeable nickel cadmium micadi batter ies w hich means you can use them just about anywhere, al though generally not for more than three or four hours at a stretch While laptops have always had W r.ALH 'i'.llSA Qnrirwi a size and weight advantage, they often lacked the power and storage capability of a portable or desktop computer Laptop users often had to put up with small, notoriously hard-to-read. LCD display screens ' if you've ever tried to read your digital watch in full sunlight, you'll get | the picture', slow processor speeds, limited memory and da ta storage (some of the older models didn't even have floppy disk drives) and low-level, if any. graphics capability But in the past year or so that situa tion has been changing For a price, you can get a lap top with the sume type of high quality VGA (Video Graphics Adapter! graphics that come standard on IBM's PS/2 line of desktop computers, 20 megabytes or more of built-in hard disk storage capacity and even the fast 8028b and super fast 80380 processor speeds of the most expensive desktop computers While a laptop would appear to be an ideal solution for stu dents (wouldn’t it be great to be able to carry your computer with you to the library or to throw it into the overhead com partment on a plane and take it home to work on over the hole days ’1 there are some definite caveats to consider before you start counting out your money First and foremost is price Being on the cutting edge of technology is costly. While you could probably buy a fully con figured monochrome IBM-type PC AT i8028ti' desktop comput er with a 20 megabyte hard drive for under $2,000, a com parably equipped laptop might easily run $4,000-$5,000 Many of the more powerful laptops have gotten heavier and are pushing 18-20 pounds In addition, some companies have traded increased power for the freedom of battery operation Since no battery will last more than a short time when run ning all the bells and whistles, the companies have simply made them AC-only units The most reasonably priced laptops fall into the $1,100— $2,500 price range Price will depend to a great extent on whether you buy from a local dealer, mail order catalogs or newspaper advertisements Mall order offers both better prices and a better selection Despite the current prolifer ation of laptops, local computer stores simply don't stock very many of them Also, because lo cal dealers are accustomed to selling to business customers, they generally don't discount prices much A laptop is no eas ier to run than a desktop com puter so, unless you know quite a bit about computers already, you may really need that local dealer to help you get up and running While the laptop's small screen and cramped keyboard are minor inconveniences you can get used to, there are two nuyor problems laptop owners face The first is that—except for the most expensive mod els laptops have no expansion capability Some laptops have provision for adding a modem but most have no place to put add-in boards or optional inter nal drives This means that once you’ve bought your com puter you may not be able to change the graphics board, add a facsimile device, hook up a scanner or add an internal hard drive The second problem is that laptops use 3.5-inch diskettes for data storage, which are not compatible with the majority of existing IBM PC AT-type com puters using 5.25-inch diskettes This means you may not bo able to swap diskettes with friends and may find difficulty exchang ing data between your laptop and existing computers at your school Data transfer can be accom plished via modem or through such file transfer packages us Brooklyn Bridge from White Crane Software or Fast Wire II from Kupp Brothers w hich allow you to connect your laptop to a desktop computer us*
