Office gear on the go - cellular technology and portable electronics

Nation's Business, Nov, 1989 by Steven Advokat

Buyers can choose a laptop to fit their needs from a score or more of well-known brands, including Zenith, Tandy, Compaq, NEC, Epson, Toshiba, Bondwell Industries, Sharp, Datavue, and Amstrad.

Currently the lightest machine, weighing only 4 pounds, is NEC's UltraLite. It is a full-featured computer in a case about the length and width of this magazine and 1.5 inches thick. It is priced at $2,995, and it has 640,000 bytes of memory, a 2,400-bit/sec. modem, a 78-key keyboard, and connections for credit-card-sized PC. "You don't have to make any compromises with it," according to NEC spokesman Grant Schneider.

Challenging the UltraLite, Zenith Data Systems recently introduced a 5.9-pound laptop, starting at under $2,000 and featuring up to 2 megabytes of memory, a new 2-inch floppy-disk drive, and back-lighted screen that the company says can be read easily even in bright sunlight. Toshiba offers no fewer than 11 laptop models ranging from $1,250 to $10,000.

Printers And Copiers

Processing information on a laptop computer is only part of the job. Sometimes, being able to print hard copies of your work in the field can be crucial.

"As the laptop market explodes, the next thing to come is a portable printer," says Diane Garay, Toshiba America's product manager in the printer-marketing division. "People want the ability to print on the spot. If you provide them with a small-enough printer, they won't mind carrying it along with them."

Kodak and Toshiba have introduced battery-powered printers small enough to be called truly portable. The Kodak Diconix 150 Plus weighs only 3 3/4 pounds and measures 11 by 6.5 by 2 inches. Toshiba's ExpressWriter 301 weighs 4 pounds and measures 12 by 6 by 3 inches. Both can print letter-size pages on ordinary paper, and both sell for under $500.

Even copy machines have not escaped the miniaturization process. Several years ago, companies such as Silver Reed and Plus USA offered hand-held copy devices that reproduced on a thin strip of thermal paper the printed material over which the device was passed.

Those copiers had limits, however, including their inability to copy a full page the size of a typical letter.

Newer hand-held copiers, offered by companies such as Sony, Sharp, Ricoh, and Canon, are better than earlier versions, although they still can copy only small amounts of material at a time.

The Ricoh MC50 ($560) weighs just 3 pounds and makes copies about the size of a dollar bill. It is useful for copying or storing bits of information, such as stock quotations from a newspaper.

Sony's Pocket Copier ($160), part of a new Sony line of personal office products designed for use outside the traditional office setting, is a 4.6-ounce device that copies in 3/4-inch strips up to 8 inches long. It is battery-powered and makes copies on plain paper by using a heat mechanism applied to a coated ribbon.

For copying full pages, Sharp offers the portable copier model Z-30 for $999, and Canon sells the model PC-311 for $745. Both have folding handles, but at 25 pounds each, these copiers can barely be lugged.