★ HARDWARE ★ LES PC D'AMSTRAD ★ PC AMSTRAD ★ THE SCHNEIDER GAMBIT (NEW COMPUTER EXPRESS) ★ |
| The Schneider gambit (New Computer Express) | Hardware Les Pc D'amstrad |
Peter Worlock, master of the PC clone, assesses the (very) aggressively-priced Euro PC. The day of the PC compatible as home computer has been a long time coming but it's here with a vengeance now. Hard on the heels of Amstrad's Sinclair Professional comes the Euro PC from German manufacturer Schneider - former friends and partners now in head to head competition. Euro PC: The Amstrad space invader? >> You can't get the price of a PC down to home computing levels without cutting a few corners in the process. So the question is, what exactly are you getting for your money? Smart, modern appearance Physically, the computer itself is a single unit, rather like an overweight PC keyboard, and includes a more or less standard keyboard but with twelve function keys rather than the usual ten. These are arrayed horizontally across the top rather than in the more common vertical position on the left. The most noticeable difference is the wide extension on the right which houses a single 3.5 inch floppy disk drive offering 750K of storage. This faces forward, a better arrangement than the right hand side option used by both the Atari STs and Commodore's Amiga A500. At the rear of the keyboard is a comprehensive collection of expansion ports, providing interfaces for parallel printer. RS232C serial for modem or printer, an external floppy disk drive, an external hard disk, and a mouse/joystick port. Sadly, no mouse is supplied with the machine. The whole unit is styled in an off-white plastic with a raised rear edge diagonally slashed for ventilation giving the Euro PC a very smart modern appearance. If the competition between it and the Sinclair Pro was a beauty contest the EufO PC would win hands down. Very nippy Documentation is comprehensive and - unusually - well done. The introduction to the hardware is clearly written, with the welcome addition of complete pin out diagrams for all the interfaces. The MS-DOS and GW-Basic manuals are standard Microsoft but even these appear to have been specially typeset for Schneider and are much better than some I've seen. Inside the machine (not that you're ever likely to see it) the main processor is an 8088 clocked at 4.77MHz, 7.16MHz and 9.54MHz and the speed cab be changed from the keyboard. This makes it very nippy at the top rate, but gives you the option of slowing down games and other speed-sensitive software. Graphics are handled by a custom video adaptor built in to the PC and offering either Hercules compatible monochrome or CGA displays. The latter provides 16-colour text and four colour graphics modes, but text can be difficult to read over long periods. The Euro PC comes with either mono or colour monitor and the review machine was supplied with a 14 inch CGA unit that provided a sharp, bright, rock steady display. (The down side is that you can't buy a Euro PC without monitor, so if you buy an EGA display you'll have one more monitor than you need or want.) Expansion problems The Euro PC comes with 512K of main memory which is best described as adequate. Most PCs take up to 640K or 1Mb on the motherboard but because the Schneider is a closed box this isn't an option here. If you want more memory, you have to use an expansion card - and this is where the aforementioned shortcuts raise their heads. The single greatest benefit of the PC standard is its expandability, and most PCs offer anything from three to five slots for expansion cards. However, those cards take up a great deal of space - and were obviously the first thing to go in the Schneider design. What you're left with is a single slot for a PC half length card Schneider has accommodated this in elegant fashion: a section of the case on the left side slides out revealing a standard card connector. Your card is easily slotted into place lying flat and horizontally across the case. The case section slides back into position, leaving the output ports from the card visible from the rear of the PC. This leaves Amstrad's solution for the PC200 looking like a bodge (because although the Sinclair takes two cards, you have to permanently remove the top of the case and have your cards sticking out where they are exposed to dust, prying finders and sudden impact from any stray object). The single slot limitation is really the key to weighing up the Euro PC. On the one hand, Schneider has already provided most of the things you'd normally use a slot for: mouse port, and serial and parallel interfaces. On the other hand, the slot is too small to take a hard disk card. You'll really have to think about what that slot gets used for. If you add an EGA graphics adaptor (highly attractive) you can't expand the memory. And so on. And when the slot is filled, all further expansion has to be external. A fully expanded Euro PC promises to be a thing of supreme ugliness. And even the largest expanse of executive mahogany will vanish under the PC, a monitor, a floppy drive, a hard drive, a modem, a printer, a mouse and all the associated cabling.
Express Verdict First there's the question of whether you want a PC compatible at all. If your main interest is playing arcade games, or dabbling in computer graphics, you'd be far better choosing an Amiga or ST The Schneider is aimed at those with a more serious use in mind (although there is the growing range of PC games as an added bonus). As a simple PC compatible the Euro PC has a lot going for it. At £399 for the mono version, and £549 for the colour, it's fast, it looks good and it gives you access to the enormous range of PC software. If your ambitions for the machine are low, there's not much to criticise. And the bundled copy of Microsoft Works is a definite plus. However, if you think you'll eventually want more from the machine, there are real problems. The lack of expansion slots, and the need to have lots of peripherals cluttering up your desk, make it much less attractive than a traditional PC compatible like the Amstrad PC2086, PC1640, or any of the dozens of other sub £1,000 systems available. Bundled software tends to have a poor reputation, often consisting of a rag bag of very old or second rate programs the are barely worth the price of the disks they're held on. With Microsoft Works however, Schneider has done buyers a real favour. Works is a powerful integrated package offering word processing, database, spreadsheet with graphics and communications all in one. Each module is a full featured application in its own right, but you can mix and match data from each. It means that once you've added a printer to your Euro PC, you can immediately get down to some serious computing. And since Works normally sells at more than £100, it makes the Schneider look like particularly good value. HIGHLIGHTS
DRAWBACKS
New Computer Express #1 (11-1988)
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