Laptops: heavenly or mainly hype?

Press, 8 March 1988, Page 29

Laptops: heavenly or mainly hype?

By

GARETH POWELL

In April,) IBM! will announce a new family of laptop computers to fit in with its PS/2 series. These will be a new generation of machines from IBM anti we of the press may well herald them, yet again, as the start of a)laptop revolution. Sadly, experience tells us they will bei something:rather less than that. | ! Journalists as a species tend to be biased towards laptop computers. They are ideally suited to our needs <?f being able to send information — file copy — back to the office when travelling. At the same time thejy allow us to collect messages from editors who wonder plaintively, but | positively, why we have wandered Bo far away froin!our original brief. I As a result, we encourage the computer trade jvhen it says) the laptop revolution is nigh, it draws hear, it approaches. But, as it says in Proverbs, hope Referred maketh the heart sick, and while there have been many harbingers of this computer spring, it has never blossomed. ) I IBM is making no announcement about its hew laptops — fit) is not given to) leaking advance information j—) but the following! seems to be an accurate summary. ) ) • IBM is dumping its earlier laptop, the Convertible, almost everywhere except Australasia. Launched with any amount of enthusiasm in other countries, |it has died the) death internationally.) • To replace the Convertible, IBM may, it is believed, release two new machines. The new laptops will, it is thought, follow the PS/2 line design and will have MCA (micro channel architecture) built-in and will operate)with OS/2. • The low-end model for release in April will be called the Model 40 and will be driven by an Intel 80286 chip running at a brisk 10 mega Hertz. It will have , a noh-back lit superwistedberefigentexpealidocious screen.

j It is to be devoutly hoped that this will be more i readable than the non-supertwist horror that originally graced the) convertible. For ageing myopic Celtic

journalists, that screen was plain unusable. This new machine is targeted directly at the ground now held by the (Toshiba 1100 series.

• The high-end model for release sometimes in the L first half of this year, will, itiis thought, be called the Model 70 and will be offered as a direct rival to the, Toshiba T3lOO, which is [arguably the most successful high-end laptop on the market today. This new IBM will run with the superfast Intel 80386 chip — as does the T5lOO, the top of the line Toshiba model — and will have a gas plasma screen — which means it will only work when plugged into mains electricity — and will have a hard disk as) standard.

IBM, then, is taking the potential laptop market seriously. )

Meanwhile, the market leader, Toshiba, is all set to 1 offer a range of portables running with the new operating system OS/2, probably at the end of July or early August. As Toshiba is about:to release Unix on its top end 5100 laptop, this will give it a foot in three operating system camps — MS-DOS, OS/2 and Unix. The problem for IBM and Toshiba in hewing to the OS/2 line is that there is not, as yet, an overabundance of OS/2 software. Indeed, a dearth. At the same time OS/2 makes staggering demands on random access memory if it is to be run in a true multi-tasking mode.

, If you want to run several programs simultaneously, the operating system alone is going to fang at least two megabytes of random access memory. While all of Toshiba’s top end machines can be expanded to four megabytes, this is not a cheap option. It will be interesting to see whether IBM launches its laptops with four megabytes of random access memory as standard. It must if it wants to fulfil the inherent promise of OS/2. On the other hand this will

push the price of its laptops into a very unappealing sales area indeed. | x 1 i

Meanwhile, Tandy, which brought the world the übiquitous model 100, a true laptop used by thousands of journos, has a. new and very desirable laptop in the 1400 LT. This runs With the NBC V-20 microprocessor which works the same as the Intel 8086 and 8088 series — the standard for PCs — but at 7.16 mega Hertz pushes the work through about 50 per cent faster. It has a supertwist screen, 768 K of random access memory and two 3.5 inch disk drives. As Tandy is the world’s largest computer retailer, this machine has as good a chance as any. In the United States, Tandy has already launched a super-quick 386 hard disk version of this 1 machine. There is, then, much activity in the laptop market. But all of this somewhat avoids the larger question: is there a major market, a viable niche, a serious future for laptops? The suggestion has always been that a laptop allows a travelling executive to take the office along as a travelling companion. Difficult to see the boss cockie of a company sitting in his hotel bedroom with a laptop computer and working out the coming year’s finances. For computers do not work in a vacuum. They need figures, data, information which comes from other computers, other people, other departments. The sad, lonely isolation of a sterile hotel bedroom is not the place where these are readily available. ; Flying back from England on Qantas I did a quick check with the business class passengers on the stretched upper deck. I was alone in carrying a laptop computer. And other inquiries suggest this would not be an isolated case.

Where laptops do come into their own is as travelling databases for travelling sales people. Dendrite is a Sydney-based company that caters for this with a sophisticated database/messaging/sales recording program that allows sales personnel to be

always in touch with what is happening back in the head office and, more Importantly, go into every sales call fully prepared. | i • The technique is called the Farley file and dates back to the days of the Eisenhower Administration in the United States. The good general was not blessed with) a good memory and so one of his aides set up a system where every j contact he made was recorded in )a filing system. Then, seconds before the next encounter, ithe aide would furiously whisper in the President’s ear: "John 'Patrick, Republican, golf fanatic, wife Is Myra, broke leg early) this year.” ' ! And Ike would approach smiling, saying: “John, good to see you. How’s the golf? Is your leg better? And how is your lovely bride, Myra?”, I ; Sickening, but successful. ) With Dendrite, the sales person checks the computer before going into a call and finds the correct name of the contact, when the last call was mbde, what was promised, what was ordered, what publicity is required, what the object of the call Is. Plus )any other personal details that are relevant — plays golf, broke leg, wife Myra, and so on. | Anyone who has ever been on the road selling knows what a boon and a blessing this sort of information can be. The cinemas of Australasia have always depended for their custom in the afternoon on sales reps who had a bad time on their morning’s calls. No longer. With the information supplied by a laptop computer, the sales rep can walk in smart, smiling |and confident. ) But this excellent use is narrowly defined and is for a finite market. And this demand is also jwell catered for by low-end laptop computers. | That there is a major market for a full rangle of ‘ laptops from cheap to highly expensive is an article of faith in the computer industry. But no-one has been able to quite state precisely where that market is hiding. i