Re: Buying a Notebook (non-XW)

[dkanagy@xxxxxxxx (Dan Kanagy)]

In article
,
Jimmy C Diecker  wrote:

| I'm in the market for a notebook and would appreciate any leads. From
| their ads, I'm attracted to MPC, Gateway 2000 Colorbook, WinBook and
| Midwest Micro, but of course it's impossible from ads to know, for
| example, what the keyboards are like.

I quite like the keyboard of the Gateway 2000 ColorBook, but I
wouldn't recommend it for running Warp. It has a number of
quirks that didn't surface under Windows or DOS, the most
annoying being suddenly finding myself staring at the system
setup screen when hitting the "s" or "q" key in DOS. This
problem only affects some DOS programs (either when running in a
virtual DOS machine (VDM) session or in a virtual DOS boot
session) and is never a problem in native OS/2. It will also
happen at the DOS prompt itself. This problem is annoying enough
that I've decided to move to a ThinkPad.

OS/2 is a high-performance OS and is likely to find and bring to
surface any hardware design flaws. Flaky motherboards will
result in flaky performance (a situation likely to affect Windows
95 as well). I would recommend that you contact the manufacturer
to get their assurance that their laptop will run OS/2 and to ask
whether they provide support to
OS/2 users. Net.rumor had it that Gateway 2000 offers only tepid
if any support of OS/2. Then again I have one of the earlier
ColorBooks so perhaps the newer versions work better with OS/2.
And perhaps Gateway is now more forthcoming in supporting OS/2
users.

Several other things to keep in mind. Make sure the video driver
of the laptop you intend to buy works well with OS/2. I can only
get 16 colors and not 256 colors to work under OS/2, while 256
colors worked under native Windows and DOS. If high-speed
communications matters to you, confirm that the laptop you order
contains a 16550 I/O chip. Not all do
(like my ColorBook), which means you won't get the most out of
14400 baud and higher modems.

Another thing to keep in mind is whether the laptop will work with
OS/2's automatic power management. The ColorBook I have won't (I
don't know about more recent versions). That means that
suspend/resume doesn't work for me. I understand that this is a
problem with other laptops, even some ThinkPads.

_________________________________________________________________
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Dan Kanagy     Work: wordwise@xxxxxxxx    Play:
dkanagy@xxxxxxxx
Tokyo, Japan
dkanagy@xxxxxxxx