Companies bank on changing attitudes to lap-top computers

Press, 15 April 1986, Page 34

Companies bank on changing attitudes to lap-top computers

Like most — not all — journalists I am enthralled and enraptured by portable, lap top computers. They make life much easier for the earnest, itinerant scrivener. But their manifold charms have not yet become apparent to your average travelling executive. They appear to be staying away in their tens of thousands. Even when the HewlettPackard 110 was offered in 1984 and, in one mighty leap vaulted past every other portable, the response was something less than totally encouraging.

Hewlett-Packard referred to it as “an important addition to our range of general purpose personal computers.” True, it did not have a built-in disc drive but it did have the major programs — especially Lotus 1-2-3 — already built in to its memory, it did have a readable screen and it was immensely quick in operation. It was also IBM compatible and easy to link to another computer for downloading and uploading information.

Journalists and writers did not take instantly to the machine because it was not, in truth, designed as a word-processing computer.

On the other hand, middle - management users who need the HP 110 for spreadsheets and accountancy functions are normally extremely happy with the machine. But there are not enough of them to engender the sort of sales the machine needed, the machine deserved.

Much the same story applies to every other portable machine that has been released from the Data General DG 1 to the NEC 8401 A.

For example, the Toshiba 1100, which is one of my all-time favourite machines, boasts half a megabyte of memory and a 3.5-inch floppy-disc drive, which gives an amazing 720 K bytes on each disc — say 100,000 average words — a 25line by 80-character liquid crystal display screen, which, if not backlit, is still as readable as any other.

When you are not travelling, the machine can easily be hooked up to a monitor.

I am in no way disparaging the machine or giving anything away when I say that sales have failed to live up to expectations. These are all lovely machines, powerful machines, elegant machines.

Which simply do not sell enough. Now, almost every computer company is gambling on the fact this attitude will change, and change in the near future. The range of portables available on the market at the moment is the largest it has ever been even if the sales are not yet mammoth.

Joining the serried ranks come some new offerings which we will probably see in New Zealand in the next few months.

The first is the Olivetti M 22 — why does this Italian company name all of its computers as if they were; machine guns? — whi®j is a battery-oper-

ated lap machine with a built-in 5.25-inch disc drive, a backlit liquid crystal display screen, up to one megabyte of memory, full IBM compatibility and the ability to run for eight hours on one charge of its batteries. Unbelievably, it will also be available with a 10-megabyte hard disc. Not to be outdone, Compaq has also produced a new machine — a luggable rather than a portable — which is compatible with the IBM AT and will run up to five times as fast as the standard IBM PC.

This is not a true lap portable as it has to be plugged in to the mains power supply.

Also new is an entry from Sony, romantically called an SMC 210. This is also an IBM compatible, has 640 K of memory, two built-in disc drives, a liquid crystal display screen (you can also use a colour monitor) but, again, does not operate off batteries. It needs to be plugged in to the mains to work.

Toshiba is bringing out two replacements for the THOO, one of which has an orange-plasma display, but, sadly, will only be able to run on the mains. The T2lOO offers two disc drives against the one in the original machine, and weighs considerably more. Like the 1100, it is IBM PC compatible. The T3lOO, on the other hand is IBM AT compatible using, as it does, the 80286 central processing unit.

It has a 10-megabyte hard disc as standard a% well a^ v a 720 K floppy.