From: rpaiz@husc11.harvard.edu (Rodolfo Paiz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops
Subject: Re: Compaq Contoura
Date: 13 Oct 92 01:22:54 GMT

terry@xenlink.cuc.ab.ca (Terry Terry) writes:

Terry Terry?  Wow... cool. ;)

>Greetings,
>Recently I have been giving some though to the purchase of a DOS laptop,
>and the Compaq Contoura has bubbled to the surface as good choice.

>For a Compaq the price seems RIGHT!  I would appreciate any comments 
>current owners/users might have about the Contoura.  In the few brief
>glimpses I have had - I liked the look, but "looks are only skin deep".

The looks are great, and the machine is even better.  Essentially, the
Contura (note sp) is the same as their LTE Lite series, except for two
small differences.  One, you can't get a docking station for it, and two,
it's a *little* bigger and heavier.  Both of those make it much cheaper.

The Contura and the Lite have SL power-managing processors at either 20
or 25 MHz.  Biggest hard drives are 84 Mb (15ms) for the 20MHz and a 
really nice 120 Mb (15ms) for the 25MHz machine.  Video is active matrix
VGA 640x480, display has 64 shades of gray.  Can also run external color
monitor (no modifications to drivers or software, not even selecting)
at 800x600, or both the external and the internal display simultaneously
at 640x480.

Both machines include a small four-way set-associative cache for the
processor, and are really good at making batteries last long.  Average
battery life (in reality) seems to be 4-4.5 hours.  Worst case is about
3.5 hours (when trying to make it die).

Weight is about 6 lbs. for the Lite and 7 for the Contura.  Contura
*might* be a touch heavier, but I'm 99% sure that it's not above 7.

All come with 4 Mb RAM on motherboard, which is expandable all the way 
to 20 Mb (only one mem. expansion slot, but they now have a 16 Mb RAM 
card), and there is another internal slot for fax/modem.

I love, love, love these machines.  Ordered a Lite 25 w/120 Mb hard
disk a while ago, and should be getting it... yesterday?  (They're
late.)  I'm also adding 8 Mb RAM and the fax/modem.

Please note that Conturas and Lites w/ 120 Mb hard drives are selling
like hotcakes, and there is the backorder from hell going on.  At one
point, I saw 711 units backordered.  Check before placing order.

Recommendations:

More RAM is always nice.  Whatever you don't use, make into a disk cache
and save battery.  I've acheived 5 hours by loading useful stuff into
cache and then not touching the hard drive.

Careful when buying RAM.  Many people charge amazing amounts for this
stuff.  I'm a computer dealer, so I got my RAM and fax/modem at cost.
This also lets me see what retail is supposed to be... and the 8 Mb
RAM card retails for $ 1,500.00!!  You can imagine the margins by the
fact that my sale price is actually $650.00.  (Then again, who pays
retail these days?  I'm sure a lot of people have even lower prices
than that.

Two HIGHLY recommended makers of RAM for these machines are Cumulus
and Kingston.  Especially Kingston.  More expensive but good stuff.

Also, if you're in the market for a fax/modem, you've just GOT to
check out the stuff made by Megahertz.  WOW!!  They've got 2400
and 9600 bps fax/modems designed specifically and exclusively for
the Lite and the Contura.  I've used one for two years, and give
it 10 for 10.  Beautiful piece of hardware.

They've also...... [drum roll] got a 14,400!!  I couldn't believe
it, but it's true.  Slated date for first shipment is Nov. 7, and
bulk should be late Nov. '92.  And it's for damn sure one of them
is going into my computer!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the first 14.4 ever offered
for a notebook computer?  Fully internal, full-function?  Also,
price should be (according to me) not much higher than $800.  Hey,
it's expensive as hell, but *I* think it's worth it.

Hope all this helps, and hope you haven't fallen asleep reading.
Summary:  Contura's great, Lite's even better.

Later,

Rodolfo
rpaiz@husc.harvard.edu