ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/MAGAZINE/MISC/TN_2H91.ZIP/NOV91.TXT

Text File | 1991-10-28 | 7.5 KB | 156 lines

             TOM'S COMPUTER NOTES FOR NOVEMBER 1991

                          Public Domain

LAPTOP LIGHTNING lets you leave your spare battery at home, so
the hype sez. It's a disk cache program from LUCID CORPORATION.
They claim that "much of your PC's battery power is used up
accessing hard drives and floppies. But, Laptop Lightning lets
you access RAM instead." I suppose PC-CACHE etc., would work just
as well. Laptop Lightnings "introductory price" is $39.95.

A COMPUTER STORE in Burbank (Wall Street Journal ad on Sept. 23)
offers the TO TRAVELMATE 2000 (20 MB HD) at $1,049.

DR DOS UPGRADE notices went out from Digital Research on Sept.
20th. The upgrade cost is $24.95.

IN THE MARKET for a real cheap XT backup computer or one for a
student in the family? EPSON makes good stuff. Left over XT
compatibles are available from MIMBRO at $299 for an Equity 1+
mono system. Extra drive is $50. UNITED COMPUTER EXPRESS has the
Equity 1E mono system ay $298. That has a single 720K drive.
Telephone numbers are: 1-800-451-9780 & 1-800-448-3738. Both
outfits are in NYC.

MS WORD demo disk (Ver. 5.5) is available at 1-800-541-1261,
Dept. R90.

QUICKEN VER 5.0 is out. I sent off my $19.95 plus $5 the day I
got the upgrade notice. Why don't they make it $5 plus $19.95
shipping & handling? .... QUICKEN for WINDOWS is also supposed to
be available. It's like DOS Ver. 4.0 with "some" of DOS 5.0's
features. .... The new DOS version has new "user defined
QuicKeys" which I suppose is some sort of macro capability. Also
some built-in loan amortization features which will (providing
you have set it up right) track principle & interest payments
separately by dividing up the loan payment according to what it
knows about the loan amount, interest rate and loan length. It
will also print out a complete loan schedule for any loan. Will
be interesting to see if it does that right. Most loan
amortization programs don't do it right because they can't round
cents properly. I use $7,000 at 7% for 7 years (12 payments a
year) as a test and at about the third payment the principle and
interest DON'T add up to the total payment ($105.65) for most of
the programs and spreadsheet templates.

DANMARK RECENTLY had an ad for a 286 laptop billed as a "well
known name" which we can't mention but call us if you want to
know. At $799 the price wasn't too bad except for the CGA screen,
640x400. (I thought LCD CGA was 640x200?) I could tell that the
name [blocked out] had seven letters. Not being able to think of
any seven letter well known names except TOSHIBA and it didn't
look like a TOSHIBA I called Danmark. How's this for a well known



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name? CHAPLET. Well known where? At Danmark where they are stuck
with a load of them.

DOES EVERYONE FANTASIZE over the computer mail order ads or am I
the only one? This month two computers caught my eye. A "low
ball" starter system (20 Mhz 386SX) and a speed demon 486-33
system. "System" usually  means: Some kind of a monitor and hard
drive included. The low ball comes from ZEOS at $1,195 though you
probably couldn't live with the 512K memory. Have them yank the
512K chips (which you would have to throw away if you did the
upgrade yourself) and put in a meg. You can add more later. The
upgrade costs $50. I talked to Leo, a very friendly salesman at
extension 1069.... The 486-33 also comes from ZEOS. Just $1,795.
You can add VGA, a bigger drive and more memory later. Standard
memory is a meg and the drive is a 42meg IDE. You might want to
add a second floppy later as well. 1-800-423-5891.

THEN THERE IS the 386-33 from Treasure Chest. 64K cache, 4 megs,
130 meg HD, 2 floppies, .28 VGA, VGA controller with a meg,
mouse, WINDOWS, LOTUS WORKS, FAX/MODEM.... $1,895. Buy one for
the wife or the kids for Christmas.

IBM pays Microsoft about $35 for a WINDOWS package.

THIS COULD HAPPEN to you: The computer boots then crashes while
trying to load the last TSR in AUTOEXEC.BAT which happens to be
CAROUSEL. The crash consists of PrtScrn happening all by itself
and pushing many pages of paper thru the printer ('till I reach
over and turn the printer off.) Later, without CAROUSEL I have no
PATH and can't get a path set up. Programs in SUB DIRS will run
but can't find their overlays, even when in the same SUB DIR.
What's wrong? I was out of environment space. Fixed that by
bumping the environment up to 1,024 in CONFIG.SYS and all has
been well since. Now I see why I didn't (before going to 1,024)
have a cursor in any CAROUSEL partition except number one.

BizMart really does sell the TOSHIBA 1000SE for $499. How do they
do that? Way below mail order price.

HEADLINE In The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 2nd, said, "IBM to
Unveil Plan to Build Macintosh Clone." The sub-head was, "Once
Unthinkable Move Comes as part of Links With Apple, Motorola."
Don't hold your breath on this one.

DANMARK TOLD ME when I ordered the TANDON LAPTOP that they had
quickly sold out but were trying to get more and would put me on
backorder if that was OK with me. It was. This was in the middle
of September. If I were to get one it would be "about the middle
of October." ..... After a while I got to thinking that a $499
TOSHIBA at half the weight (or better) not to mention half the
price might be a better deal. I started hoping that the TANDON
deal would fall through. Of course, the TOSHIBA didn't have a VGA
screen or a 40 meg hard drive, or any hard drive for that matter.
And, it wasn't a 386 either. ...Naturally, on Oct. 9th the office



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manager called to say U.P.S. had delivered two boxes for me...
The TANDON. It's really BIG. Alongside a TOSHIBA T-1000SE anyhow.
You sure wouldn't want to carry it on an airliner. It's bigger
than the seat tray and so heavy it might break the tray. But, I
mostly wanted it for the office (on my desk,) so it's working out
OK. (Box number two has some kind of a carrying case but I
haven't opened it to see what it might be.) (The computer came
with three manuals and DOS 4.01).

CAN'T HARDLY BELIEVE it but ten years have past and I once again
have a chance to by a mailorder SANYO computer (well, it's sort
of a computer) called the SANYO 550. What a deal. 128K
(expandable to 256k) and complete with DOS 1.0 and a 12"
composite monitor. Only $175 from American Design at 1-800 776-
3700. This SANYO should work well 'cause it's a "factory refurb"
and "like new."

A RECENT ISSUE of the WRIT has an excellent article about
computing in general and using computers in the office in
particular titled Law Office Computing. It's by Winton D. Woods
who not only knows his stuff computer wise but is also a darn
good writer. (As an aside, I'm sitting here writing this in the
middle of a big thunder storm on Oct. 21st, at 4:45 pm. Am I
turning my equipment off 'cause I'm worried about lightning
strikes, power surges, etc.? Heck no, because I'm using a laptop
on a battery!)  ...Back to Woods: He sez "Wordperfect 5.1 on a
386/25 machine with a great VGA monitor is like driving a big
Mercedes the back way to San Francisco in the old days when
Nevada didn't have a speed limit." But, he has a lot of good
things to say about the Mac too. It big interest lately has been
sharing files on a PC and a Mac. After having tested a number of
programs he came up with this: "MacLinkPlus/PC has everything you
need to integrate a Mac into your office PC system."

                             THE END