Looking through the adverts and product reviews, one major thing struck me: I seem to be the only impoverished 95LX user in existence. The cost of peripherals is quite incredible. For example, the price of an external 3.5" floppy drive is $359, almost ten times the price of a standard internal floppy drive. I actually found it cheaper and more convenient to buy a full 286 system plus connectivity pack than purchase the external drive. This can't be right.
I read the ACE Technologies advertisement about SWITCH with considerable interest. Do you know if it can remove Lotus 1-2-3 from the RAM disk? I don't use Lotus and probably never will. It has to be taking up an inordinate amount of room on the RAM disk that I could put to much better use. Is there any way to get rid of it.
Alexander Johnson
Derbyshire, ENGLAND
[The software built into the HP 95LX and 100LX Palmtops is permanently etched into ROM (Read Only Memory). It cannot be deleted, nor can built- in applications such as Lotus, PHONE, APPT, etc., be copied to disk. The built-in software takes up no space on the RAM disk.
As far as pricing is concerned, I believe the example you gave was Sparcom's Drive95 external floppy drive (95LX and 100LX models now priced at $329.95). It's not quite fair to compare Drive95 to an internal floppy drive you install in your desktop PC. Drive95 comes in a custom case, has internal rechargeable batteries, an AC adapter, and system driver software designed for the peculiarities of the 95LX or 100LX. One of the problems consumers face with specialized products is price. The fewer number of items you are going to sell, the higher the price has to be to cover software/hardware development and manufacturing costs.
Fortunately, HP Palmtops are becoming more popular and more standard. The new 100LX and 200LX are very DOS compatible, have VGA monochrome screens with 25x80 displays, and have standard PCMCIA Type II card slots similar to card slots in many laptop and notebook computers. Many DOS programs can run off the shelf on these Palmtops. In addition, hardware developers can produce devices for laptops and notebook computers that should work with the 100/200LX with little or no modification. In fact, there is a new portable floppy drive called the Travel Floppy described on page 6 of this issue. It interfaces with DOS compatible computers via a cable attached to a PCMCIA Type II card and costs $229 -- Rich.]