PHILIP FRANK, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA Philip Frank initially bought a NEC PC-8201 to teach himself BASIC, a goal he continues to work toward today. Meanwhile, he's been pleasantly surprised by the computer's versatility, particularly since he added Ultimate ROM II from Traveling Software. Frank reports that he used the 8201 constantly during three years of on-the-road systems analysis and productivity-improvement consulting, when he found the computer "indispensable for telecommunications." When the traveling became tiresome, Frank gave it up to take a job coordinating meetings for the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "I don't really miss the traveling I did on my old job, but I do kind of miss getting messages on the 8201," says Frank. At Wharton, Frank deals with corporations coming to give lectures, secures meeting rooms, contacts the appropriate professors and arranges catering services. The 8201 has taken a back seat at his new job, where he uses it only occasionally as a peripheral to his desktop computer. But the laptop still figures prominently in the businesses he runs from his home, where he uses it with an Epson HX-80 to write business letters and print invoices. "I handle mailing lists for guest houses in the Philadelphia area," says Frank. "Since most of them don't like to relinquish their registration books, I need to do on-site data entry. In enter all the names and addresses on my 8201 and dump the data to my desktop when I get home." When he's not coordinating meetings or working on guest-house mailing lists, Frank is cooking up a new project: He's hoping to sell templates that go with stock databases that would set up reservation and registration systems for guest houses. "I've already completed one template for the Apple II," Frank says. "And I'm working on another for IBM-compatibles." PHILIP CARACENA COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO Philip Caracena, Ph.D. gets called away from his private psychotherapy practice more and more lately. Carrying one of his two Model 100s, he visits recently-hospitalized psychiatric patients to administer a variety of diagnostic tests at the request of the patients' treatment teams. "Treatment planning meetings happen quickly after a psychiatric patient is admitted," explains the clinical psychologist. "The patients are in there for acute reasons, so the team needs information fast. I administer psychological tests, enter the scores on the 100 and send them over TELCOM to an interpretive service." Caracena's use of a computer in his psychological work is part of a growing trend. "There's a movement in the field toward using straight computer testing without complementing the data with subjective observations," says Caracena, who feels strongly that such tests should not be given by untrained people. "The human factor is important in giving psychological tests," he explains. "Psychological tests have limitations. Many statements they make apply to a group, but a variety of additional factors must be considered when testing an individual." Caracena incorporates the results sent back to him into reports he writes on the Model 100. "I get fast results for people who need fast consultations," he says. He hopes that his fast turn-around time will keep him competitive with others who provide computer-administered tests without the context of a complete report. One of Caracena's favorite tests is the Rorschach ink blot test, in which people look at an ink blot and say what they see. While psychologists' interpretations of their clients' responses used to be very subjective, says Caracena, now the test is much more empirical. "A psychologist used a computer extensively to compile test results and to improve the scoring system," he says. Caracena records patients' responses with a character set of 25 or 30 numbers and symbols. Meaningless by themselves, when sent to an interpretive service in Minneapolis via TELCOM the responses can be compared with thousands of test results whose subjects have known psychological characteristics. Caracena finds this testing method to be so useful that he's working on a manual for its use which he hopes to publish within the next year. Part of the effort, he says, is to "find better ways to assemble consultation reports." He hopes that psychologists like himself who invent or use computerized tests don't use the computers' responses perfunctorily, but remember to incorporate the computer feedback creatively into treatment programs. An ex-ham radio operator, Caracena says the Model 100 also meets some of his hobbying needs. "The 100 is a hobby in itself," he says. "It's a game to see how far I can stretch its use." He's pushing the machine's limits by trying various programs and games, and keeping up with new products. Caracena doesn't anticipate outgrowing his 100 until he intensifies efforts in his Rorschach manual-writing project this summer. Meanwhile, he has an IBM-PC compatible desktop computer that sits quietly in his house, collecting dust. WALTER SCOTT & KAREN MORTON KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE You may remember Dr. Bunson Honeydew and his assistant Beaker from the Muppets, the stars of public television's Sesame Street who went on to Hollywood box-office fame. Namesakes of Honeydew and Beaker reside in the Knoxville home of Walter Scott. The Knoxville Beaker -- who looks a lot like a Model 100 -- assists Scott in telling Dr. Honeydew -- who looks a lot like a Heath H-8 minicomputer -- how to adjust his home control program. "Dr. Honeydew wakes me up in the morning, turns the heat on in the bathroom about 10 minutes before I need to use it, and starts the coffee maker. He checks the mailbox and tells me when mail has arrived, alerts me to the arrival of visitors at our front gate, controls the air conditioning, and reminds me of birthdays and anniversaries," explains Scott. Beaker accompanies Scott and wife Karen D. Morton on their frequent business and recreational travels. Dr. Honeydew stays home, of course, turning lights on and off to deter potential house thieves. Scott utilizes Beaker's telecommunications abilities to tell Dr. Honeydew when to turn on lights or air conditioning for their arrival back home. Beaker serves many other purposes, says Scott, an electrical engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Scott's current focus at work is the Atmospheric Fluidized Bed Combustion Demonstration Project; that is, he's helping design a coal-fired power plant that will burn high-sulphur-content coal efficiently and cleanly, without the need for expensive scrubbers. "I use Beaker for writing memos and for a lot of the tedious number-punching in my programming design work," explains Scott. Uploading data from the 100 is far more cost-efficient than entering it directly into the TVA's Chattanooga mainframe, he adds. "For technical writing," says Scott, "I use the 100 almost exclusively." Scott takes notes on Beaker in business meetings. "Nobody has objected to my using the 100 in meetings," Scott says, "but I do get some raised eyebrows. Some guys tease me about taking notes that way, but a couple have been inspired to get their own laptop computers." Beaker has a counterpart Model 100 named Cassandra that accompanies Karen Morton, a programmer and technician who works with dBASE II. Cassandra isn't much help in dBASE II programming, but does earn her keep at home, where Morton uses her for writing science fiction. Married about a year ago, the couple had met at -- you guessed it -- a computer users group meeting. "The computers are our kids," says Scott, who claims that Dr. Honeydew hasn't misbehaved in a couple of years. "We're very pleased with our computers -- and very dependent on them. Honeydew's system has been evolving since about 1981. He runs continuously now, doing about 16 different tasks. A few years ago he turned the lights out when I was outside at night, and once he turned on the air conditioning on just about the coldest day in winter. Otherwise, he hasn't been any trouble at all." RICHARD WENER MAPLEWOOD, NEW JERSEY Consulting environmental psychologist Richard Wener researches the influence of physical design on people living or working in various types of spaces. His clients include jails and prisons that have incorporated a new type of architecture called "direct supervision." These innovative designs eliminate the need for bars, glass or cement block walls that separate inmates from the officials supervising them. The new designs often resemble dormitory rooms that open onto group living areas and facilities. Supervisory staff members mingle with inmates in these communal living areas. "You might expect that the staff would be at risk in such a setting," says Wener, "but my observations indicate otherwise. The innovative designs encourage better communication between inmates and officials. With the proper training provided to jail and prison officials, the level of tension, violence and vandalism in these modern facilities is significantly less than in conventionally designed institutions." To aid in his research, Wener uses his Model 100 with a program of his own devising that allows him to code behaviors and types of physical spaces. "I can use a code to note what someone is doing and where he is doing it," explains Wener. "The 100 stores and analyzes this information." Wener can then use the data in several ways. "I can print out the raw data, cross-tabulate behaviors by types of physical spaces, or look at the range of behaviors that occur in a particular type of space." Wener has yet to introduce the 100's role in research to the graduate students he teaches at Polytechnical University in Brooklyn, New York. "I only have one Model 100," he says, "and it's fully loaded with data." He hopes to purchase several more laptops soon for teaching purposes. The 100 does go with him to the school's library for taking notes, as well as on plane trips and to other consulting jobs he does for private companies. "Employees in large firms usually have no control over designing their own work space," Wener says. "My job there is to interview employees, observe how they work and get them to participate in redesigning their own work environment." When using his Model 100 on the road, Wener sometimes finds himself the object of other people's behavioral observations. "The 100 is a good conversation starter on planes and trains," notes the psychologist, "although it's becoming less of a phenomenon as laptops become more popular." DENNY THOMAS HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA Denny Thomas, an electrical engineer at Capitol Records' Hollywood headquarters, discovered the Model 100 after getting burned out on 10 years of high-pressure professional programming at the mainframe level. "This would be a cute little guy to mess around with," he thought when he saw a 100 on sale about a year and a half ago. He bought the machine, obtained a subscription to CompuServe and has been a Model 100 zealot ever since. Thomas joined Capitol's crew of engineers to help build, repair and maintain the company's three recording studios, six editing rooms and two disc mastering rooms. When the manufacturer of Capitol's minicomputer showed him how they run diagnostics using the Epson Geneva laptop computer as a terminal, Thomas caught on quickly and wrote similar utilities on a Model 102. "Instead of buying a Geneva, which I consider a useless machine, I rewrote the diagnostic programs on the machine I was already familiar with." Thomas also uses the 102 to write technical manuals for Capitol's complex CD equipment. Two Model 100s keep Thomas busy at home. "I use one with a Chipmunk disk drive as a desktop computer for programming and for communicating with CompuServe and several bulletin boards," he explains. The other goes with him in his briefcase, along with a Tandy Portable Disk Drive. "The Tandy (disk drive) is a better deal than the Chipmunk for travel because it weighs less," opines Thomas. Thomas serves on the Club 100 BBS advisory board, where he's working to get permission from programmers to upload their work. His vast experience with the 100s allows him to assume what he calls "a guru posture" on the BBS -- he helps out others more than he receives assistance himself -- and mostly he does it, he says, because it's a lot of fun. Thomas dreams of becoming self-employed. But expanding his horizons in the music field would probably mean moving to Nashville, New York, Los Angeles or perhaps London -- moves he wouldn't relish. "And I can't get excited anymore about the mainframe environment," he says, after having looked into learning higher-level languages in order to qualify for corporate programming projects. Programming for laptops, on the other hand, has captured his interest: "The challenge is to make them do something that doesn't seem possible, to create software like Traveling Software's T-Word, which I think is the best word processor on the planet." Thomas says he misses the creativity involved in programming. "Previously, I did my own system analyses, wrote and researched my own applications, assembled whole packages. That was back in 1975 when no standards like Lotus [1-2-3] existed. I'm more interested in doing the whole system than just nuts and bolts." So what holds him back? "The idea of starving," he laughs. A. ALAN POUND LILBURN, GEORGIA What does Alan Pound do with his laptop? "It would be easier to tell you what I don't do with it," he replies. A salesman with a nationwide organization of manufacturers' representatives, Pound lists at least 20 tasks he accomplishes with his 100 before I can't keep up with him. "It's my notepad, alarm clock, typewriter, telephone book, calendar... It's sitting on my lap right now. I was just entering some personal expenses when you called," he says. Pound rarely pulls the 100 out of his briefcase during a sales call, since his hunt-and-peck typing style interferes with maintaining eye contact with his customers. "I'll only take it out to check my schedule or consult a customer's file," he explains. Outside the customer's office, however, the 100 is almost always at his fingertips. "I have 20 years of experience selling," says Pound, "and for 17 of them I wrote lots of notes that got lost. I couldn't keep track of customers' orders, phone numbers, addresses or anything else. That inspired me to get into computing." His goal in purchasing the Model 100 three years ago was "to look like I'm always in an organized office, even though I spend two to three days a week on the road. With the 100, I think I've come close to achieving that. I'm much more organized now -- though some people might dispute that!" About a year ago Pound left his sales position to become his own boss, and now he feels a need to be more organized than ever. "The Model 100 has helped me to survive that move," he says. Copyright (c) 1987, Laptop User magazine.