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From: james@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
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