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15 June 2006 Best laptop I ever used
This featherlight, genuinely A4 computer basically comprised an eight-line screen and the Protext word-processor - with which I was already very familiar, having written several thousand lines of CPC Z80 code with it. It didn't have much storage (64k CMOS RAM). Getting the files back to my Mac IIsi required a bizarro RS232-to-AppleTalk cable and ZTerm, ye olde comms software for System 7. But it was such a gloriously immediate design. You turned it on, you typed, you turned it off. When you could be bothered, you transmitted the text to your desktop machine. Nothing got in your way. There were only two irritating things about the NC100. One was that it had the recurring Amstrad keyboard matrix problem: when you pressed three keys simultaneously (which, as a fairly fast typist, I do often), the cheapo keyboard decoding would assume a fourth. On the CPC this was mildly annoying and only manifested itself when I typed 'list', a problem solved by abandoning Locomotive BASIC and writing everything in Z80. On the NC100 it was pretty much fatal. 'omp' (a fairly common combination) generated an up-cursor press, so I'd be happily touch-typing only to find that the last eight words had inserted themselves halfway into the previous sentence. Aargh. But the most annoying thing was that the NC100, unlike an iBook, wouldn't stand up to being dropped onto the floor, hurled into walls, and other I-took-this-laptop-on-the-train-and-then-to-the-pub-oh-and-then-I-got-pissed shenanigans. Mine died repeatedly (usually in Cambridge... hmm), was resurrected repeatedly by Rob Scott, and eventually died for good. Such a shame. All of which is why the "rumor" of an Apple ultra-portable, in a week where I've rediscovered the joys of train travel for commuting between Charlbury and Burton, has got me more excited than any Mac gossip in the past five years. Comments | |
...was the 