Apricot machines seem to be designed by people with a grocery list of all the latest technological innovations, but not necessarily a good idea of what to do with them.

These innovations include infra-red input devices, a mouse option, voice input, an 80-column by 25-line LCD flat-screen display and icons.

Most of the features on the Apricot Portable are similar to those of the F1. Its most imposing aspect has to be its large LCD screen. This space-saver, plus the cleverly designed twin circuit boards which form a sort of V-shape, enables the machine to fit into a carry-case.

The Portable is the first machine in the UK to use a full-size (80-column by 25-line) LCD screen, although STM Electronics in the US has released an IBM-compatible version of its Pied Piper micro in the US using the same screen.

Adjustable so that you can change the angle of the liquid crystals to suit the amount, the screen had - unlike the STM machine - no backlight to deal with use in dimly-lit rooms.

Also, unlike most portables of this type, the Apricot Portable has a full RGB interface and can generate the same high-resolution colour as the F1.

In addition to the infra-red keyboard and mouse inputs (identical to those on the F1), the Apricot Portable is the first machine in its price range to use speech input. Although the system did seem particularly sensitive to background noise, the speech input worked.

It offers a full vocabulary of 4096 words using overlays of which only 64 words can be recognised at once. It's questionable, however, whether packages will be written by software hosues to support the speech system.

The Apricot Portable features - along with the ACT Diary and ACT Sketch packages offered for the F1 - a software series including SuperWriter, a word processor/spelling checker, SuperCalc, a spreadsheet, and SuperPlanner, an address book/executive planner which might make ACT Diary redundant. That's if you don't already consider redundant the idea of an address book on a micro.

Between the two circuit boards in the portable sit the disk drive and power supply. This design solves the head-dissipation problem enough to dispense with the usual noisy fan. Combined with the Portable's convection-cooling system, that should keep the Apricot running even on the hottest of summer days. It won't let you use it in the garden, however. Unlike other LCD screen portables, the Apricot Portable needs mains power and thus falls halfway between lap-held and luggable portable categories.

The Portable has one Apricot-compatible expansion slot and can take an external less-than-portable 10Mb hard disk. An optional dot matrix printer acts as a portable companion and can also go in the main carry case.

ACT has obviously thought carefully about what's currently available and what's currently wanted by the user. From a design point of view not much can be said for the rear views of most of the current crop of PCs. When these things were still novelties, no-one minded the unsightly mess of cables issuing down over the desk. These days, however, there's undoubtedly a lot of room for a product like this.

Continue to review of Apricot XI