Tandy Corp’s Grid Systems Corp has come out with the first lap top computer to use the 20Mb 2.5 hard disk drive from PrairieTek Corp, Longmont, Colorado. The GridLite XL – for extra light weighs in at 9 lbs 8 oz and is claimed to be the lightest lap-top with a 20Mb hard disk drive. The battery-powered machine is also touted as the first lap-top to incorporate a new high-contrast, low-power reflective liquid crystal diode display, claimed to produce sharp, easily readable text and graphics indoors and out with a 12-to-one contrast ratio, which Grid claims to be 50% better than newsprint. The reflective film, black-and-white supertwist technology needs less power than backlit, double supertwist LCD displays, Grid says. The machine also includes a 2,400 bps Microcom Networking Protocol internal modem with error detection and correction, data security and compression features. The machine uses an 80C86 CPU with 8MHz clock slowable to 4.77MHz, and comes with 1.44Mb floppy and up to 1Mb of read-only memory. The 28mS access time 2.5 disk is optional. The $2,000 price for the GridLite includes only the CPU, screen, 128Kb memory and floppy plus serial, parallel and RGB ports; all the other items are extras for which the company gave no prices. Ships in July.
