European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 27, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A Page 14 the stars and stripes computers tuesday september 27,1994 it s a Small world after All Oday s Lap do As much As desk units by Michael Himowitz Baltimore Sun i remember being thrilled years ago by the first Lap top computer Ever used. It was a Zenith and it weighed Only 17 pounds which was about half As much As the first generation of so called transportable. The Zenith had an 8086 processor 640k of memory and two floppy drives and it would run for almost two hours on its batteries. If the Light was t too Bright you could see the screen pretty Well too. Of course my enchantment dissipated the Day i found myself with five minutes to get from one end of the Cleveland Airport to the other. Suddenly that 17 pounds seemed like a Millstone. Today As the metro liner bounces and sways its Way from new York to Baltimore i m writing on a gateway2000 handbook. It has an 80486 processor eight megabytes of Mem Ory and a 170-megabyte hard drive. With the ase closed it s 6 inches wide 10 inches Long v/2 inches inches High and weighs 3 pounds. The incredible shrinking computer has come a Long Way. In fact there s virtually nothing you can do on a desktop machine today that you can t do with a Laptop if you re willing to spend enough Money and haul around enough accessories. Besides Basic word processing and spreadsheet work you can hang a cd rom drive and sound device on a Laptop for multimedia presentations or add a card that lets you tap into the network at your Home office. With a Docking station you can even turn your Laptop into a full fledged desktop monster. As a result portable computers account for 20 to 25 percent of sales today. If you do a lot of travelling and your other computing needs Don t mandate a desktop machine a portable May be All you need. But think about it carefully because there Are still major Trade offs. Like most big complicated gadgets jammed into tiny packages Laptop computers Are More expensive than their full size counterparts. They Start at about $1,400 for Low end monochrome models with 80486sx processors four megabytes of memory and marginal 120-Meg-Abyte disk drives Andi can run Well Over $5,000 for High end color models with High Speed 80486dx or even pentium processors and disk drives of 340 megabytes or More. A v ". " advances in processor disk drive and memory technology have made it possible to add Speed ram and permanent storage for Only slightly More than they would Cost on desktop machines. As usual More is bet Ter particularly More memory. Within a Given Power Range the important things that distinguish one Laptop from another Are their screens and keyboards. They re the parts of the com Puter that you Deal with every Day and they re so Crit ical that you should t buy a Laptop without giving it a thorough tryout. All laptops have liquid Crystal display cd screens if you Don t think they re really liquid Brush your Fin Ger lightly across the screen of a Laptop while it s run Ning and you la see the impression it makes. Lids Are fragile and outrageously expensive to replace often More than half the Cost of the computer. Unfortunately the cd is the component that s most Likely to break. / /  ,. With a few exceptions Laptop manufacturers use. Bac lighting to illuminate their screens. A few manufacturers eliminate Bac lighting to save weight and pro Long Battery life. Be careful of these they can be hard to read in dim Light. Monochrome screen technology is generally Good with displays that Are readable under most lighting conditions. Color lids Are Piffier and a lot More expensive i if you do a lot of travelling and your other computing needs Don t mandate a desktop machine portable May be ail you need. Adding $600 to $2,000 to the Cost of a Laptop. There Are two kinds of color displays passive matrix and Active matrix. Passive matrix screens generally Are paler an Don t have the vibrancy of regular color monitors. Active matrix screens Are much better but they Cost a for tune. No matter How Sharp they Are Laptop displays Are much smaller than Standard monitors and text will be harder to read. That s Why Many people who use Only Laptop also buy a Standard Monitor for use at Home. If this is important to you make sure your Laptop has a external Monitor port not All of them do. The keyboard is another Comfort Issue. A Standard desktop keyboard is 18 inches wide a Laptop keyboard has to fit into a 10-or 11-Inelvform Factor. Obviously something has to give. How the Man fac. Turer decides to Compromise can make a big  give you separate Page up Page Down Homes a Susan Harris arid end keys important for word processing while others double these up on the cursor keys making you hold Down a function key to get to the top or Bottom of Page  manufacturers shrink the cursor keys others shrink the function keys. Some move the backspace and delete keys to Odd places. This is another Good reason to give a Laptop a workout before you buy it. Find one with a keyboard that makes you feel at Home. With windows becoming the Standard for modern business computing the Laptop s pointing device is also critical. Because they re used on planes and trains where there s no room for a mouse laptops come with a variety of mouse substitutes. These include Side or Center mounted trackballs or Little buttons that rotate360 degrees at the touch of your forefinger. Once again find one that feels right to you. Since most Lap tops have an open serial port you can also buy a regu Lar mouse and use it with the Laptop when you re work ing at a desk. Size is another Issue that can work both ways the new generation of subnotebook such As the Gate Way May weigh less than 4 pounds but you la pay a Price. Subnotebook screens often give your software display a squashed appearance. Since subnotebook manufacturers save space and weight by eliminating the floppy disk drive you la have to buy an external drive which adds to the weight you re carrying. Slightly larger notebook models which weigh 5 to 7 pounds generally have better keyboards displays and built in disk drives. They re better choices unless weight is absolutely critical. Also if you re thinking about making a Laptop your Only machine consider How you use your computer. If you use a portable strictly for word processing spreadsheets and communications on the. Road it might Well be cheaper to buy a powerful desktop unit and a Low end Laptop rather than putting All your Money into fancy computer to  on cd rom a new Page in publishing by Stephen c. Miller new York times the circulation figures Are Low to minuscule and the and pages Are almost non existent but that has t stopped a num Ber of Magazine publishers from diving into the interactive cd rom Market. Nearly a dozen companies Are or soon will be publishing multimedia Magazine that exist Only in the cd rom format. Multimedia the combination of text graphics full motion video audio an animation is viewed by Many computer Industry analysts As the growth Market of the future especially for print publish ers with material that can be repackaged and sold to a different audience. According to the software publisher association Consumers spent $136 Mil lion on cd rom titles in the first Quarter of the year up 366 percent from the comparable period a year ago. There Are an estimated 6 million computers capable of running cd rom software. Computer manufacturers Are installing cd rom drives in most of their new models. The multimedia business re port a newsletter that tracks the Multi Media Industry reported that sales of computers Able to run multimedia soft Ware those equipped with cd rom drives and sound cards will reach More than 17 million units next year. While More than 8,000 cd rom titles Are currently available the number of magazines available in the format is tiny. It s a category that has t been As big As it should be said Julie Schwerin president of inf tech a Market research firm in Woodstock it. Schwerin said she believed that con Sumers and advertisers were con fused about the concept of a Digi Tal Magazine. Many people involved in pub Lishing cd rom magazines agree. It a big educational problem said Michael Rogers managing editor of Newsweek interactive a quarterly edition of news week Magazine that has been published since 1992. We be had to explain it in terms of existing Media and that does t quite work because we re creating a new  Steven Podradchik who publishes Medio Magazine a monthly general in Terest cd rom Magazine said the big problem with cd rom magazines is that people Don t know what they re get Ting until they see it. You can t flip through the pages at the  another problem with cd rom magazines is the difficulty in sustaining a Reg ular publishing schedule. In addition to text photos and graphics multimedia magazines have to add sound and  these elements have to be packaged with an attractive layout in computer terms the interface and the Reader must have the ability to search easily for specific items or browse through the Magazine by using a mouse. Distribution poses another hurdle for cd rom magazines. Most Newsstands bookstores and software specially stores have been tentative about stocking cd rom titles