RE: PCMCIA CD-ROM

[Eugene Fiume <elf@dgp.toronto.edu>]

On May 22, 11:47am, Robert Dewar wrote:
} where do you get a $2000 saving. the difference in price I see between
} a CD and a CE is less than $1000, and you are eating up a few hundred $
} with the Panasonic.
} 
} What's the battery life of the Panasonic?
} Is it supported by WARP
} Can you install WARP from the Panasonic?

I didn't say the above, but I can offer a view.  The difference between
a CE and a CD here after lots of bargaining was about $CDN1500.  After the
CD-ROM, that left $CDN1000, and for that, I'm losing a MIDI port, and
low-quality (remember I'm a graphics guy) video scan conversion.  I
really would have liked both of these features, but they're easy to buy
for less than $1000.  Unfortunately I'm sure I'd end up spending more
than that on the video, given my "quality" pretensions, so I'm trying
to keep away from the stores.

As for Robert's points regarding the Panasonic, he's quite correct.
I don't bother with batteries on mine (though I will when in Europe).
Warp doesn't support it nor can install it from CD-ROM.  So I created
30 floppies and felt sorry for myself, thinking I should have got
a supported quad speed CD player through a parallel port.  But then I
realised that almost anyone who updates either PCMCIA or video drivers
under WARP is going to have to make some diskette images (but not
30 diskettes worth).

Again, Linux is better on this score.  I can't install Linux from my
CD-player, but I can take the entire Linux distribution off CD-ROM and
put it in a DOS/Windows partition, and build Linux from there.  EZ.
The Warp people could easily have done this too.

Eugene Fiume.