Osborne, pioneer of the portable, is back. Stuart Cooke takes an early look at the Encore

Osborne Computer is set to make a comeback into the British micro market with its new, lightweight portable called the Encore.

The Encore weighs about nine pounds, has an 80 x 16 LCD display, a single disk drive and 128K of RAM as standard. Osborne claims that the Encore is totally software compatible with the IBM PC.

A padded black case is supplied with the machine.

The keyboard folds down from the main unit, which holds the screen and a single 5.25" floppy disk drive, to form an 'L' shape. The keyboard has 63 alphanumeric keys, ten function keys, and a section of the keyboard can be turned into a numeric key pad.

'Keys' is probably not the correct name to give the membrance strip situated at the top of the keyboard. The strip has areas marked out for the ten function keys, and areas to press for the real time clock, modem and disk drive. Unfortunately, the membrance on the preview model was coming away from the casing in the top left corner - this will have to be watched for on production machines.

As mentioned, the keyboard pivots from the main body of the Encore. Two plastic lugs are all that hold the keyboard to the main unit and if the keyboard was allowed to fall it wouldn't be at all surprising if the keyboard broke off.

In use the keyboard proved to be very reliable and had a good feel to it. My only gripe is the size of the return key. Most machines designed for business use tend to have a large 'L' shaped return key, the one on the Encore is only double size. Perhaps I was just being clumsy but I did hit the wrong key on more than one occasion causing the machine to do things that I wasn't expecting.

A 16-line by 80-column LCD display is provided. This tended to suffer from a problem that is common to all LCD displays: if you move position relative to the display you will no longer be able to see the text on screen. This means a constant fiddling around with the control at the side of the machine.

Because the display has only 16 lines, Osborne's claim that the machine is totally IBM-compatible is a little bit of a white lie. Most IBM software uses the whole 25 lines of the screen. When such software is used on the Encore, any screen display which requires 25 lines is chopped off.

A 25-line display is in the offing and Encores will be some of the first machines to have them fitted. Osborne says that owners of machines with 16-line displays will be able to upgrade very easily.

Once in production the Encore will be supplied with one 5.25" disk drive: a second drive will be an optional extra. Two drives were provided with the review machine. Each drive offers 360K of storage.

One moan about the drives is the way in which the disk is inserted, with the label away from you. This may not be the end of the world but if you want to check that you have the correct disk in place then you either have to remove the disk completely or crane your neck.

Perhaps the most annoying feature of the machine looked at was its habit of hanging up in the middle of running a piece of software. Once the machine had stopped working the only way to restart it was to pull out the plug and turn on again.

It must be remembered that the machine looked at was a pre-production model and the regular non-performance of the machine was probably due to this.

Despite claims that the Encore is totally IBM software compatibility, some programs on the IBM system disk did not work correctly. Most noticeable of these was the total inability to run either Basic or Basica. Once instructed to lead either of these, the machine would appear to loead them and then either jump out of disk mode and return to the real time clock, or just stop working. In either case the only way to re-use the machine was to power it off and start again from scratch.

The final version of the Encore will have a built-in modem. A terminal emulation program is integrated with the modem and, like the clock, can be accessed at the press of a button. No modem was supplied in the preview model, so it was not possible to check out the performance.

A press of the clock function key displays the time, date and a very pretty world map. A press of the disk key will return you to whatever you were doing before.

The rear of the machine holds all of the sockets for the supplied interfaces. This is where you will find the socket for the 300 baud modem, an RS232 port capable of 300 to 19.2K baud synchronous and asynchronous communication, and a centronics parallel port.

Power to the machine is supplied by a 15-volt adaptor. A rechargeable/removable battery pack is an optional extra. Of course, that will increase the weight.

Osborne is paving the way towards a whole new breed of portable computer. If the IBM 'compatibility' can be tightened up the Encore is an ideal choice for someone who has access to an IBM in the office. It should be possible to work in the home, or even on the move if you have battery back-up. Because the Encore will have a built-in modem it should be possible to download files from the machine to the office IBM or the company mainframe over a normal telephone line.

Once the machine is fitted with a 25-line screen it is possible that the Encore will be a better buy than an IBM because of its lower cost and true portability.