Subject: Laptop Keyboard solution

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

REply to Message from Jay McNally , 22 Jan 2005

≪I need to buy a laptop for my daughter, a college sophomore. We've been
asking around about the best model to purchase and are getting a variety
of opinions.

There seems to be UNIVERSAL distain for Dell.≫

Besides which, there appears to be a real problem running XyWrite on the
displays in some of them. On 1/11/05, Robert Holmgren observed that of
the three laptops he uses, one, a Dell Inspiron 4000 running XP SP2, has
a persistent second cursor when running XyWrite. Never happens on his
Thinkpads, always on the Dell. And even _he_ cannot make it go away. So
best to steer clear of them.

Another thing I'd steer clear of is those swappable floppy-CD drive combo
bays. My (second-hand) ThinkPad has one, and first I couldn't get the
floppy seated. Then I did, and decided not to risk losing it again, so
found a parallel-port IDE box and put one of my old CD drives in it. Then
a diskette got caught in the floppy, and once I got it out, the floppy
wouldn't work. I cannot figure out whether the drive or the attachment
circuits are shot or whether I'm just not getting it seated correctly.
But one doesn't need that kind of hassle. Of course, with a newer laptop
with USB, you can use a thumb drive in place of a floppy--but not for
booting, and I should not be comfortable not being able to boot from a
floppy at need.

About the keyboard problem, has anyone tried these roll-up keyboards I've
seen advertised? Having short fingers, I don't mind the size of laptop
keyboards, though the lack of the number pad keys is a real pain.

Patricia M. Godfrey
PMGodfrey@xxxxxxxx