Date   : Sat, 15 Sep 1984 20:34:00-EDT
From   : "Stephen C. Hill" <STEVEH@mit-mc.ARPA>
Subject: Epson PX-8 (Geneva) review

Let me preface this with the comment that I was only able to get close enough
to play with this unit for about 10 minutes, so this will not be a thorough
review.  My frame of reference is my NEC-8201A lap computer.

The unit seems to be well constructed, and about the size of a piece of paper
(nominally 8.5 by 11") and less than 2" thick.  It has two stubs that rotate
from the back to become feet that adjust the angle of the keyboard.  The
keyboard is relatively quiet, and has a short row of function keys above it
(five PF keys and <ESC> <PAUSE> and <STOP> keys).  It has four arrow keys, and
I believe that I saw two control keys.  There is a removable cover that
protects the keys when the unit is not being used.

The display is 80x8, with better resolution than the HP Portable that I saw
three weeks ago.  The display rotates up from a face-down protective position
into several detented positions.  Additionally, there is a control on the
display that adjusts the "viewing angle".

The big selling point that I had heard about was the unit runs CP/M on a Z-80
chip, and has several bundled software products on ROM chips.  There are slots
for two ROM chips to be loaded at a time, and they are treated as ROM-disk
drives B: and C:.  There is 15K RAM disk available as drive A: and a 3.5"
firmly-disk (well, it certainly isn't a floppy!) a la' the Macintosh, that
plugs into the back and becomes drive D:.  I was not impressed by the data
transfer rate of the disk.  I believe I saw something that said that it was
running at 38.4 Kbs, but I may be wrong.  There is a CP/M utility ROM-disk
with: STAT, PIP, PXMODEM, TERM, etc.  Another one has a slimmed down version
of Wordstar, although I think that this one will be harder to learn, since the
^J help menues are among the missing.  There are two additional ROM drives
that I wasn't able to see: a scheduling program (by Micro-pro), and a
spreadsheet program.  There is also an internal micro-cassette tape recorder,
but I was not able to discern how it was operated, in the time available to
me.

So far, so good.  If it weren't for the following I would have walked out
of there with one (which isn't quite true, since they had none in stock, but
they would be delivered Real Soon Now).  The 15K RAM drive just isn't big
enough for my needs (up to two weeks on the road before I can dump data back
into my Molecular Multicomputer,) and the only way that you can upgrade is by
60 and 120K external units.  (One of the reasons that I was looking into the
Geneva, was the NEC is just about an inch too thick to fit in my briefcase, so
I must carry it.)

Another BIG boo, is the fact that they have chosen to go non-standard on their
RS-232.  They use what appears to be a mini-DIN plug.  They have cables that
adjust from their plug to DB-25s, but they are male plugs, so I would need at
least a gender-mender in addition to their $30 one-foot cable.  I asked the
Epson (not the dealer's) technical representative if the information to craft
my own cable came with the unit, he "thought" so.

I noticed no battery-low indicator on the unit, and the display documentation
said that if "you turned the unit on and the display didn't show anything, it
was time to recharge the unit."  I certainly would hope that the screen
doesn't die on me after I had been working on a report for several hours.  I
asked if there were a spare battery pack that you could carry with you, but the
tech rep said that he would have to get back to me on that.

My bottom-line opinion: for some people, an adequate lap-portable, and I feel
that Epson came close to making me part with my money, but I believe that I
will wait until they make further adjustments.