Compaq vs. Cordata: Each Has Its Strong Points
Compaq Computer Corp., based in Houston, has been an unusually successful company in the treacherous business of designing, building and marketing personal computers. So far, all of Compaq’s offerings have been right on the mark, which is a record that neither IBM nor Apple can claim.
Cordata, which used to be known as Corona Data Systems of Thousand Oaks, meanwhile, has been struggling throughout its five-year life to capture a profitable share of the market with an evolving line of desktop and portable computers. Its current line of PC-compatible machines is built by the South Korean Daewoo Group, which also builds the popular Leading Edge Model D computers. Daewoo has an equity investment and credit line agreement with Cordata totaling $20 million.
Early Portable
Lately, Cordata has also branched into the laser printer market with a machine that offers some important advantages over the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printer that it competes with.
It was Compaq that built the first IBM PC-compatible portable computer, just a few months after the IBM desktop was introduced. The Compaq portable, at about 30 pounds, was soon dubbed a “luggable” because of its heft. Only a body-builder would comfortably carry it any distance by hand. The rest of us need one of those collapsible luggage carts. And it wouldn’t fit under every airline seat.
But it was rugged, absolutely compatible and it allowed both high-resolution text and low-resolution graphics on the same built-in green monitor--and you could plug in a separate color monitor.
The descendant of that pioneer machine is the Compaq Portable II, which is smaller in every dimension and a few pounds lighter. I still wouldn’t want to try to cram it under the window seat in the economy section, and I still won’t carry it by hand more than a few feet, but it is an altogether superb computer. It is, in fact, an all-purpose computer--a single box that will do most things in most places that most computer users want to do.
Cordata builds a portable computer as well, in several versions. The Cordata ATP that I tested is about the size and weight of the original Compaq, which is also the size of the current Compaq Portable 286 that utilizes the original portable case design.
The Cordata ATP offers 50% higher resolution text on its nine-inch green screen than the Compaq, and it also accepts an external color monitor. But it is not as easy to switch between text and graphics modes on the Cordata as it is on the Compaq. The Cordata computer that I tested would not run Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, but company officials said that bug has since been fixed and that existing machines will be repaired at the owner’s request.
What the two computers have in common is the use of the Intel 80286 microprocessor chip--the same one used by IBM in its high-performance AT models. Both the Compaq and the Cordata come with 20-megabyte hard disk drives for program and file storage plus a single floppy drive. The Compaq Portable II has a 360-kilobyte floppy, and the Cordata ATP can be purchased with either a 360-kilobyte unit or a 1.2-megabyte floppy.
Both computers can have 640 kilobytes of operating memory (RAM) on their system boards. Upgrade options can push the Compaq to 2 megabytes of RAM and the Cordata to 15 megabytes. Both also come with battery-powered clock/calendars as well as serial communications and parallel printer ports. As equipped, the Compaq has two expansion slots open and the Cordata has three. Each computer can accept an alternate video board, such as an enhanced graphics board.
Construction appears to be strong on both machines. Inside their plastic cases, the circuitry and components are enclosed in metal, which makes installing accessory boards more difficult than in a desktop PC. The Compaq has the more pleasing cosmetic design to my eye, while the Cordata’s placement of the cooling fan at the rear makes it the more silent of the two.
The Compaq Portable II Model 4 described above carries a suggested retail price of $4,999. The Cordata ATP, equipped as described above, is priced at $2,895. You can expect actual prices to be discounted. You’ll find the Cordata in fewer computer stores than the Compaq, which reflects the relative market strengths of the two companies.
More Limited Market
The Cordata LP300 laser printer competes in a more limited and perhaps less defined market than its computers. Hewlett-Packard created the market with its LaserJet. Other laser printer producers, whose numbers are growing, have to offer more features or a lower price or more performance.
Laser printers work like office copiers, printing an entire page at a time rather than a line at a time the way daisywheel and dot matrix printers do. Since all of the characters are imaged electronically, you can mix several type fonts and sizes on the same page and add graphics as well.
Cordata is making its bid using the same Canon copier mechanism used by Hewlett-Packard, so performance and print quality are virtually the same. The Cordata advantage is in added features and ease of use.
As anyone who as ever attempted to send print function codes to the HP LaserJet must have learned, it is awful. For instance, instructing the HP to change its print font requires issuing a command such as this:
Esc&l1O; Esc(8U
Esc(s0p10h12v0s0b3T
On the Cordata Laser Printer, the instruction looks like this:
FONT BKMAN18P
The two commands invoke different fonts, but the comparison is legitimate. All of the HP instructions are unintelligible, and they mix symbols and letters that are difficult to distinguish such as the small l , the numeral 1 , the capital O and the zero. (Who do they think operates these machines, programmers?)
Cordata made another smart design move. They gave their laser printer the ability to look like an Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer to any software program. Since virtually every software package written for the IBM PC and compatibles can drive that Epson printer, you can be sure that all of your software will work with the Cordata Laser Printer.
You won’t need to worry whether your word-processing software can take advantage of the Cordata LP300, however, because its $2,995 price includes WordStar 2000 properly configured to work with it. It also includes 38 separate font styles and sizes and a program called FormEasy that allows you to design and print forms on the laser printer.
All laser printers require built-in memory and programming intelligence to run. The HP puts that circuitry into the printer, so all you have to do is connect it by cable to a computer, just like other kinds of printers.
Corona puts that intelligence on a circuit board that must be plugged into your computer. If you want to run the printer at various times from more than one computer, you’ll have to buy extra interface cards for each computer ($400) plus a switch box and cables or use a local area network.
That potential difficulty aside, I liked the way the LP300 worked. The WordStar 2000 software included is a sophisticated word-processing package that should meet most professional needs and makes it easy to take advantage of the printer’s special features.
The one caveat is that it is complicated to print envelopes on the laser printer, which is also true of Hewlett-Packard’s.
Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.
