European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 13, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A i a i.1 it i. . A a a Gizmo Mani technology overwhelms consumer by Jim Dillon Cox news service professor Laurence Feldman of the University of Illinois at Chicago likes to Tell this Story Quot one of my mba students asked her Mother to tape some movies for her at certain times Early in the morning like 2 . The Mother gladly obliged but it Wasny to until later that the student discovered to her horror that her Mother would stay up All night to turn the Var on and off. The Mother just did no to know How to set the  sound familiar our Homes Are filled with electronic gadgets and gizmos that Are too complicated to use to their capacity because the inventors did t keep the consumer and his limited patience for High tech learning in mind critics say. As a result some of this society a greatest modern conveniences have become some the most be fiddling and frustrating appliances we be Ever used. Quot they Tell me that one fifth of the adult population is illiterate a said Feldman a former television repairman who became an authority on product development and marketing. Quot but we still have plenty of literate intelligent people who Are having trouble with this stuff there simply is a Large proportion of our population that is going to have trouble dealing with something that a not simple Quot he said. Take buddy Giles of Dayton Ohio. He has a videocassette recorder and a microwave oven that drive him nuts thing i want to know is How to i and rewind on the Var and i seconds and Cook on the said Giles 40. A but its still person with no matter How Eion to understand How some is Are supposed to  in is to link product engineers Tsmith Quot human factors Quot people who understand what j and want in consumer goods at happens on a wide scale 111 continue to compound our blaming ourselves for our fed ineptitude said Donald a. Ictor of the Institute of fences at the University of ban Diego. Everyone perceives the fault Crown nobody wants to 1 trouble Quot Norman said in his Fie psychology of everyday creates a conspiracy of talking the feelings of guilt Ness among  this grief Over a microwave i microchip brain americans oked on these gadgets Are according to the electronic miso citation consumer group. Les of consumer e electronics estimated $44 billion last year fid. Color television sets and be recorders accounted for 1 billion in sales Fieri cans have More electronic for Homes than Ever before. Of i 91.4 million households in year 96 percent have at least one color to 68 percent have a Var 23 percent have a computer 19 percent have a compact disc player 31 percent have a Telephone answering machine and 25 percent have cordless telephones the group said. This technological tidal wave shows no sign of abating the group said. Quot As we enter the 90s we expect this wave to continue As More products and systems Are added which Impact americans lifestyles Quot the group said. Quot the revolution in How America communicates educates does its business and cares for itself a All with the Aid of electronics a has Only just begun Quot Peoples troubles with new technology probably began soon after some Cave Dweller discovered fire and tried to show friends How to use it said Leslie Whitaker a psychology professor at the University of Dayton who specializes in human factors studies. They continued under capitalism when the Quot packaging of a product began to differ from or attempted to conceal the actual  of that product Quot Whitaker Sain. Yet we re increasingly aware of these problems today because we have much More Access to new technology Whitaker said and its coming at us at a much faster rate. Much of this new technology is wasted on us though. We simply done to have a need for it the professors said. Quot people seem to think that the More features you buy on something the More Quality that it must have Quot Feldman said. Quot we All do it. People think they May have some use for this feature at some future time. So it s contingency planning for contingencies that never  in other instances we become intrigued with the idea of doing something wonderful with a machine we re not prepared to spend much time with. Quot lets take a microwave oven for example Quot Feldman said. Quot you walk into a store and see somebody who really knows what he s doing who understands the technology and who is producing All these terrific dishes effortlessly. Quot then you come Home and realize that if you want to do the same thing you re going to have to learn this technology a Feldman said. Quot you Tell yourself come on. Who has time for that a a a sometimes there is a younger person in the House who really knows How to make these gadgets and gizmos hum Feldman said. But they eventually grow up move out and leave the older folks stranded. Gall Rosenbaum for example has a 57-year-old Mother who struggles with All of her modern electronic appliances. Quot she has everything but she will have nothing to do with it Quot said Rosenbaum 26, often Aviv Israel. Quot she can to set a digital clock let atone operate a  Rosenbaum said she believes women have More trouble with electronic gizmos than men. She recalled a recent Oprah Winfrey show in which four women were led to a room Given instruction and asked to the set the timer on a Var so a show could be taped for playback later. Only one succeeded Rosenbaum said. William Preston 62, of Miamisburg said men and women of All Ages Quot want something that a simple and easy to operate a something you just look at and do it rather than taking the instructions and going step by step by  other problems can be traced to the machines controls and the Lack of feedback they provide the experts said. Many people can t set the timer on their older Vars for example because they can to see what happens when they need to push those puny control buttons on the front. So if they push the buttons out of proper sequence they can to see what they did wrong. That problem has been solved with the Advent of digital televisions and on screen programming where the user sees the consequence of each control action Whitaker said she refused to even consider buying a Var until on screen programming became available. Much of the blame Falls on the manufacturers and How their design staffs think. Consumers however Are putting More pressure on manufacturers to make devices that Are easier to understand and operate. And manufacturers Are responding by using design teams that understand both the technology and the user. That s especially True in the personal computer business Whitaker said where new Home based systems such As ism s ps/1 Are being built and marketed As extremely user Friendly. But until this human factors approach becomes Standard operating procedure Whitaker urges Consumers to show a Little ingenuity themselves. Quot be a smart consumer. Don t buy it unless you can use it Quot she said. Laptops with desktop Power by Peter h. Lewis new York times reinforcing its reputation As the personal computer Industry s technology Leader the Compaq computer corp. Has become the first company to fit the full Power of a desktop pc into a Laptop Small enough to carry in a briefcase. In doing so Compaq has come close to creating a single computer that can meet the needs of an executive both in the office and on the Road. The Compaq let 386s-20 Laptop weighs 7.5 pounds. At 111nches wide 8.5 inches deep and 2.2 inches tall it is roughly the size of a middleweight Telephone Book. Compaq refers to its new machine As a notebook pc but it s Well beyond the 5-Pound limit that Many people assign to that classification. Regardless of the nomenclature the let 386s-20 is a Champion in its weight class. It boasts an Intel 386sx microprocessor operating at 20 Megahertz two megabytes of system memory a High capacity Diskette drive a Choice of 30 or 60-megabyte hard disk drive and via graphics. No other portable of comparable size can match its features. Epson America inc. Is the Only other computer Page 14 the stars and stripes maker to have announced a 386sx-based notebook machine and at 5.8 pounds it is closer to being a True notebook. But the Epson uses a slower 16-Megahertz Chip and it will not be available until the end of the year. Compaq officials say their machine is on its Way to the stores. Trying to re establish itself As a Leader in portable computers Texas instruments inc. Has unveiled a slim lightweight Battery powered portable computer also based on the Intel 386sx microprocessor. The Neutra Elmate 3000, at 5.7 pounds and $5,499, is nearly 2 pounds lighter and $1,000 less expensive than the comparable machine introduced by Compaq. At the same time Texas instruments introduced a new laser Printer that prints 16 pages a minute twice the Speed of the most common personal laser printers. The Micro laser Al Printer will Cost $3,499 to $4,499, depending on features competing 16-Page-a-minute lasers Cost $5,000 or More. The printing Speed makes the Micro laser Al attractive for offices where several computer users must share a single Printer. As most other Compaq computers do the let 386s-20 carries a Premium Price $6,499 for the 30mb Model $6,999 for the 60mb Model. An optional desktop Quot Docking Quot station that surrounds the let and adds two expansion slots two More drive Bays and the ability to use Standard keyboards and monitors is $1,499. Compaq officials said the expansion base allows the let 386s-20 to be used As the executives primary desktop machine. For life on the Road the let slips out of the Docking station. Frank j. Michnoff senior research analyst for Meta group inc., a Market research company in Westport conn., said the pricing was Quot somewhat in line Quot with his expectations. Quot Compaq does t want to cannibalize any other existing models Quot Michnoff said referring to the larger and less expensive 386sx-based set computer. He said that if Compaq follows past custom it can be expected to reduce the Price of the new Model after the Competition arrives. That Competition is already on the horizon according to Compaq notebook computers Are expected to account for 50 percent of All portable sales by 1992. Quot by the end of the year i think you ii see a whole roster of similar products some in the 6-Pound Range Quot said Bruce a. Stephen director of pc hardware research for the International data corp. Of Framingham mass. Quot there will be lighter machines and products that will Cost  in return for so much Money the user can. Expect Premium Laptop performance. The 386sx processor is not the Only feature that sets the new let apart from other Small laptops including Compaq a earlier let and Lte-286 models. The let 386s-20 has a 9-Inch, Edge lighted display that offers the full 640-by-48q dots of via Resolution. The travel mate 3000la a new Laptop introduced by Texas instruments inc. In Contra Cha steel graphics is show up c the new i shades off Many jettisoning Compaq Comaromi the St serves m r Compaq let machines have -by-2q0 Resolution which causes id a pie Chart for example would Leen As an Oval instead of a Circle pan display a perfect pie in up to 16 liners achieve their size by Diskette drive or a hard disk Lutfy vowed not to make that a 1.44-megabyte Diskette drive data and applications to and from the hard be Oes most of the work and it is much mar it than using cables or modems. Jook computers offer no More hard disk storage Compaq a the 30 and 60-megabyte .5-Inch hard drives made by a of san Jose Calif a pay was Able to pack so much into such age the company said was its use of ate ailed regal flex which has also been used missiles and the stealth fighter for rigid epoxy Glass acrylic toes the machines single circuit just that once the Board is printed Andrw than 20 m goes Well choices Ai Conner p another regal is laminate Board. The Standard briefcase the pole breast the in Overall ire tuesday nov and packs litre it literally folds Over on itself much Ike St. Besides s in space the design eliminates the need f he cables normally found in Compana s. Combw ably proud of its ability to produce the let 3 8.5-by-11 Inch form. 61.11-�?o  of inc Norm. The Ted a troughs required for such in Isturiz  Ulvi Ujama in Al non Lui our ii miniaturized Pressie. However is there really a compelling requiring computers to conform to standards 190 for business stationery ase of the 2-Pound Marvel built Bya Sunnyvale Calif. The inside to ins business suit. Foe it a Small one in the Case of the is of the let 386s-20 is that Compaq s decision to limit the Width of the computer to precisely 11 inches demands that the keyboard be miniaturized. It has All the Standard keys but they Are scrunched together. And some keys Are oddly placed. Function keys Are half size. Relaxing the Standard by As Little As half an Inch would have allowed Compaq to use full size fully spaced keys. The optimal keyboard size is determined not by stationery or Luggage but by ergonomics a specifically the size and dexterity of the operator s fingers. We can condense keyboards but we cannot shrink our fingers. This writer has Learned to Type fairly Well on the 8.5-Inch poet keyboard but the process invariably brings to mind the image of an elephant tap dancing a Standard Legal pad measuring 8.5 by 14 inches is quite convenient and also fits neatly into a briefcase. As Long As the Overall heft of the unit could be kept Tow a Laptop computer that is 14 inches wide coincidentally the same Width As a Standard desktop keyboard including a separate numeric or cursor Keypad would not seem to cause a great hardship. After All if one is going to spend nearly $7,000 for a Laptop computer it seems Silty to worry if it will fit in a $100 briefcase. Advanced Micro devices inc. Of Sunnyvale Calif., recently condensed a full at class Motherboard to a single Chip Conner has built a 60mb hard drive the size of a pack of cigarettes the Power Supply of the new Compaq machine is the size of a package of chewing gum. At this rate it May soon be possible to design a Quot smart Quot Standard keyboard that contains a computer and a disk drive with a flip up screen. We May be entering the age of the mouse driven graphical user. Interface but the keyboard is still important to Many people. A Laptop goes anywhere a even to the Beauty Salon. 1990 the stars and stripes