FIVE MONTHS USING The WP-2 Portable Word Processor ========================== 10 March 1990 ------------- Introduction ------------ I have been using a WP-2 since last November. I've been a Model 100 user since the beginning of 1984, about 70% of the time for word processing and telcom stuff. The M-100 has been quite useful, and I've had a lot of fun with it. And besides, there are all the great people I've met, talked to, and debated with on this SIG. Without this Forum, the M-100 for me would have been little more than a toy. Hence these thoughts on the WP-2 are inevitably influenced by my six plus years with the M-100. PHYSICAL -------- The WP-2 is just about perfect in SIZE, SHAPE, and WEIGHT, both to use and to carry around. It will fit sideways in just about every attache` case, and on its end in most briefcases. It fits just fine in reporters' or students' shoulder bags as well as a decent sized women's bag. The weight is just about as light as it can get without the thing sliding all over the place when you use it. I doubt if computers can get much smaller, perhaps a bit thinner maybe, and still be usable comfortably by human hands and eyes. We will see more bang per cubic inch, but I think we're just about there regards the keyboard and screen. The KEYBOARD is terrible, and will frustrate even those who write just a few paragraphs a day. The combination of shortish travel and odd springback rates somehow turns even a 40+ wpm typist into a hunt-and-peck artist. People used to gripe about the M-100 keyboard, but I never found it so bad apart from the eccentric placement of some of the "secondary" keys. At least you could get some speed out of it after a bit. The placement of the keys on the WP-2 does follow the industry standard AT layout as close as possible, but it is a hassle to get to any of the extended characters. It takes up to six keystrokes to get to (and back from) common letters with accents such as an e'. This is a real pain if you ever need these letters like I do. Lastly, the Space Bar on my unit had a tendency to not respond to anything but a "hit" directly on the center of the bar. I traced (I think) the problem to the fact that the keyboard is fixed to the rest of the machine only by two screws at the tpo of the keyboard allowing the bottom to "bounce" a bit. Hitting the space bar off center was only pushing down the whole keyboard instead of the key switch. The fix is to unscrew the keyboard from the pc board, bend the two screw tabs down (repeat down) a bit, and reattach the keyboard to the circuit board. The SCREEN is just about the best that can be expected for less than $300.oo (on sale at RS or mail-order) word computer. Actually, the 80 column display was one of the things that attracted me to the unit. That's because I am self-employed, and I have found it worthwhile to neatly format my letters, memos, etc., and the 80 column display is a help. Indeed, I mostly print out on a proportional spacing daisy wheel unit when I want to make the best impression with pure text - in this mode only the most expensive laser printers come close - or in extra resolution on a 24 pin dot matrix unit if nothing better is available. I have a thing about BATTERIES. Alas the WP-2 is too slim to take the larger "C" cells. I used to gripe about this with the original (thick) M-100. C cells last up to four times as long as the AA cells in the WP-2, and usually cost less than double the price of the AAs. In any case, the WP-2 is more power hungry than the M-100. Juice consumption is near double that of the M-100, but I assume that may be because of the "bigger" Z-80 CPU and other good stuff like that. I find it useful to set the automatic shutoff at two or three minutes, and this has been giving me the almost 12 hours claimed by Tandy. Us what write often have long pauses in us'n's work. SOFTWARE - WORD PROCESSING -------------------------- The WORD PROCESSING SOFTWARE as such is quite adequate for normal correspondence, memos, etc. The SPELLING CHECKER and THESAURUS are actually rather good considering the size, price, etc. of the WP-2. BY THE WAY, why is it that VERY FEW spelling checkers include every day abbreviations like "etc." ??? Anyway, as long as your needs are not complex, the three (five if you are clever) FONT commands you can use for special formatting will suffice. You get Bold on/off, Underline on/off and Other on/off. They become five if you assign a sequence like "reset-to-default then activate-something-else" to two of the "off" commands. I'm preparing a file on how to do these little tricks and other goodies like embedding control characters directly. I'll post it soon. Some of the other formatting commands like margins/line length take some thought as it IS easy to mess things up when dealing with indented or hanging indent paragraphs. Unfortunately, the same system of specifying these is becoming more common with word processors everywhere, but it's usually those WP programs that (unlike the WP-2) can/do work in graphics mode. It should be noted that there is no "official" (explained in the Owner's Manual .....another disaster) way to change the default settings. Thus you'll wind up doing a whole batch of extra keystrokes whenever your world doesn't bow down to Tandy's (?) programmers. Lastly, you cannot delete a file without calling up another file first and then going back to the "Menu" screen..... more wasted time and keystrokes. Unless you have at least two files in main memory, you can't delete at all. I now keep a file, NOTHING.DO, which contains nothing, just to overcome that aggravation. SOFTWARE - TELCOM ----------------- First, and most important, it is reported to be very BUGGY. The big BUG being that it is UNRELIABLE above 1200 Baud. Also, if you find yourself using a modem and you have not got all the parameters just right, you must work back to the Telcom setup menu, at that will automatically DISCONNECT you every time. The same disconect will occur if you want to upload a file to somewhere and you can't remember the exact name. It's not too bad if all you want to do is transfer files over a hard-wired RS232 cable direct to another computer, but it can/will get very frustrating and expensive if you are paying line charges to connect/upload to your home base mainframe or CompuServe, etc. You will spend more time fooling around than actually telecomputing. The February, 1990 BYTE Magazine said it all in their (negative) mini review. Ashame that review is copywrited, we could use it here on this board. OTHER SOFTWARE -------------- Personally, I'm not a user of computer APPOINTMENT programs while on the road with a laptop. Nor do I often use a PHONE DIALER very often on a Boeing 747. Both are a useless WASTE of ROM space. I only hope the routines used by these two programs already exsist for some other useful purpose. Otherwise the ROM space is wasted. It could have been better used to improve the Word Processing or Telcom software. The Calendar is ESPECIALLY USELESS as the WP-2 doesn't have a real time clock/calendar, so it's not as if it could buzz you at a given time or whatever. OWNER'S MANUAL -------------- The manual is a WASTELAND of INFORMATION as well as a WASTE of PAPER. It is full of half blank pages. A lot of what is written is either a repetition of what is said several other times in the manual or just refers you to other headings which..... vicious circle. Most of what we would like to know (es. embedding control codes in text) isn't there. It's mostly politician-speak; talks much, says nothing. CONCLUSIONS ----------- This file obviously shows just how frustrated I am with the WP-2 in every day use. The idea behind the WP-2 is great, but the implementation falls down in a couple of "minor" but fatal ways. And since all the chips save the internal memory expansion are surface mounted (soldered directly to the board) instead of carrier mounted, there's no practical way to correct exsisting bugs and defects without doing a WP-2.1 or whatever. Sure, it's possible to correct these things in software - guys like Big Blue do all the time - but this isn't the way Tandy does things. He/she/it who wants a really functional WP-2 must just wait and HOPE an independent developer will come up with expansion cards or whatever the same way that people like PCSG, Travelling Software, Purple, and all those other good people did for the M-100. Not to mention some GREAT people on this Forum. >>>> It ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN, however, UNLESS TANDY MAKES THE NECESSARY TECHNICAL INFORMATION READILY and EASILY AVAILABLE. NOW, NOW, and NOW! <<<< Within a year or so some of the current MS-DOS notebook computers will be available for under $1,000.oo including modem and software like MS-WORKS or PC-TOOLS, and this will WIPE OUT units like the WP-2 and the M-100, etc., too. - Peter Hayward Cronin - Compuserve 71510,2523 Fax: ++1+201+585-2420 -------- End of File -------