Message-ID: <1835@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Nov-84 00:42:49 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.1835
Posted: Tue Nov 27 00:42:49 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Nov-84 04:20:33 EST
Lines: 46
Nf-ID: #R:gloria:-66500:inmet:6200006:177600:1887
Nf-From: inmet!james Nov 25 15:22:00 1984
I have bought a couple of Leading Edge PC's for company work.
I have been very happily surprised at the quality of the
hardware and the documentation. (first thing to check on
a compatible is the user manual- can you get real hard core
technical info: port addresses, logic diagrams, etc)
The h/w is made by Mitsubishi (here comes Japan, Inc.). Very
nicely done- circuit boards are solid, the components are
of good commercial quality. They have a couple nice features
like the 7.16 Mhz clock, and an onboard realtime clock.
The machine (monochrome version, hard disk) is COMPATIBLE.
I haven't found anything reasonable that doesn't work, with one
exception noted below.
Works: Lotus, MS Flight simulator, Supercalc, PC-DOS (as opposed to
MSDOS), MS Project, Wordstar
Doesn't work: Concurrent PC-DOS (DRI's new multitasking version of
CPM/86. I don't know yet if this is the LE or the s/w.
Warning:
The color graphics version seems to have some compatibility
problems. I get the impression the graphics board comes
from a different vendor, and is not of as high a quality
as the rest of the stuff.
Good points: The fast clock (makes Flight Simulator much smoother)
Quiet, fast floppy drives with self-eject doors. Comes bundled
with MSDOS 2.1, and LeadingEdgeWordProcessor. Generally sold
with 256 k, which means a memory option board bundled in, with
space for chips up to 640k. They advertise a 1 year warranty
and a hotline, but I have yet to need to test these.
Bad points: Rumors abound about the financial stability of Leading
Edge. Very noisy fan (I would just replace it). A keyboard
that mimics the horrible layout of the IBM, with not such a
nice touch.
Bottom line: I think the LE is the best buy of the moment in PC
compatibles, the price is unbeatable. We get the hard disk mono
version for about $2400.
James Triplett