John Lettice leaves state of the art for the Tandy 4P

While Apple, IBM and Sinclair hog the headlines with state of the art (or in the case of the latter, state of the parts) products, it's easy to forget that there's a real world out there: people still buy tried and tested products that will do a job of work for them.

The Model 100 lap portable aside, Tandy is one of the main exponents of the micro as a workhorse, and its latest product, the TRS 80 Model 4P, is a transportable version of the Model 4. It runs a Z80 CPU, has a built-in 9" screen and twin 187K 5.25" drives. When faced with the Macintosh at around £1,800 and the Wren, complete with bundled software, at £1,000, you'd surely want your head examined to spent £1,500 on a Tandy 4P. Or would you?

The Model 4 isn't exactly in the forefront of technology, but that's not what it's being sold as. The philosophy behind a machine like the Tandy 4P is that it's a machine that will do its job, and will have the back-up needed to keep it up and running. Provided it makes the grade in these two departments, the price looks more credible.

Our review model came without packaging, but seemed secure enough on its own. It's basically a console with twin 5.25" drives house upright to the right of the screen (typical of a right-handed world). The keyboard is attached to the main console by a cable and slots away under the screen and drives.

Round the back of the unit there's the power input and parallel and RS232 interfaces, which can be covered by a snap-down hatch. To pack it up you simply close the hatch, clip the cover over the screen, turn it so the screen end is nearest the ground and pull out the handle at the back. The power cable can be packed away too if you've got a US style plug, but British standard plugs are too large - so tie it round your neck, I suppose.

There's space inside the lid for the quick reference guide and disks, but there's a problem with the latter because you have to bend them ever so slightly to get them in. Once packed up, it looks just like a sewing machine. It's pleasingly compact for a transportable, but at 11lb it's surprisingly heavy.

The review machine came with a quick-reference guide and a full manual, and we're told there's also a beginners' guide. The main manual goes into considerable depth about the Basic and provides copious information on the DOS, but it might have helped to include a section on how to start. The problem seems to be that Tandy approaches the machine's commands alphabetically rather than in a 'learning process' order, which can mean hunting through the manual to do quite simple things.

The review machine also same with a copy of Scripsit, the Tandy word processor, and the documentation here was even more extensive, including a seven-lesson tutorial suite on tape. After some initial embarrassment I learned that this was audio tape, and therefore I didn't need a cassette lead...

Both the tutorial tapes and the manual take you through a step by step guide to using Scripsit, and presuppose little prior knowledge. Unfortunately, this is sometimes taken to the point where it's a disadvantage. For example, the only reference to using a non-Tandy printer simply sends you back to the Scripsit reference guide, which I naturally didn't have.

The 4P has 70 keys, 15 of which - including three function keys - are accounted for by the numeric keypad on the right, while the rest are arranged in qwerty fashion, with the Control key to the left of the space bar.

The keys were a little springy for my taste, but not excessively so, and considering the complaints I get about the rattling noise from my preferred keyboard, a lot of people might find the 4P easier to use. Despite the fact that it's a transportable, the keyboard feels relatively spacious, and since it's detachable the working system takes up a lot less space on your desk than the standard Model 4.

Not being familiar with Tandys I struck out fairly early on in the game. I slavishly followed the instructions for loading an applications program - Scripsit was the one I had - and was baulked every time by 'Error 24', followed by a TRSDOS Ready prompt. Several hours later I accidentally discovered that typing SCRIPSIT seemed to do the trick. Error 24 is apparently paying attention to Error 24.

The next reef I ran onto was getting anything useful out of Scripsit. The program claimed 'Press Control H for Help', when it actually meant 'aH'. This gave me more hours gnawing pensively at the corner of the keyboard before the local Tandy store put me out of my misery. Apparently, the use of a acute rather than Control is to maintain downward-compatibility - future versions of Scripsit will have the Control key implemented.

An amended version of Scripsit implementing Control and the function keys arrived shortly after I'd got used to dealing with a acute.

The final problem was just plain bizarre. I tried my first printout with a Smith Corona TP1. This had already given me problems with a Tandy Model 100, so I didn't expect great success. However, it worked - with one slight drawback. The 4P didn't seem to like printing spaces between the words. Switching printer drivers (Scripsit has a number, although all for Tandy printers) didn't make any difference, and the problem remained even on an Epson. Spaces between words were possible here, but only in condensed mode, or with the margins badly messed up.

So it was back to Tandy where, after some rummaging, an Epson printer driver was found. There is, apparently, little demand for this. The main custom for the Model 4 will be business, so programs such as Scripsit are likely to be used with daisywheel printers. To all intents and purpsoes, this lets out Epsons, and if you've spent a considerable amount of money on the machine and software it probably makes sense to get a Tandy printer and use all of the software's capabilities.

These problems were only teething troubles, and credit must go to Tandy for its prompt attention to them, particularly as the 4P wasn't on sale at the time. Once the beast was fully operational I found that Scripsit was an effective and versatile word processor. It would take a Tandy printer or a lot of work to produce the various typefaces and formats to best advantage, but the ease with which you produce underlining etc compares favourably with many other software packages.

The 4P sports a particularly comprehensive and usable Basic, with that wealth of detail on its use in the manual. If it weren't for the odd doubt about the price you could sit and hack away for hours at a time, but really a £1,500 machine should be helping you earn, so this is where the applications software comes in.

The Model 4P came with two systems disks, TRSDOS version 6 and a Model 3 emulator called Modela/III. It's easy to get the impression that Tandy has more operating systems than computers (come to think of it, that probably is the case) but this is really a trade off. Tandy does try to maintain compatibility between machines, so the operating system tend to change on a gently gently basis. Other manufacturers simply bring out machines that won't run earlier software.

The new version of TRSDOS will be useful when the modified Tandy software range comes out, but currently Modella/III is something of a life-saver. Because it allows you to run software designed for earlier operating systems, you get access to a comprehensive software library. The fact that the Model 3 emulator is on disk is a sign of progress: the non-portable Model 4 has it in ROM. The Tandy software catalogue includes a substantial number of packages specifically designedfor the UK market.

All too often a UK-based business can buy a micro and the relevant software only to find that the software supplied is for the US market. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but remember that things like zip codes and postcodes take up different amounts of space.

As transportables go, the Model 4P is compact, stylish - especially by Tandy's exotic design criteria - and eminently usable. Compare it with the generation of machines that's just reaching the shops and it looks old-fashioned and over-priced, but the flipside is that state-of-the-art machines often come with rudimentary support and little software. In this sense the Tandy store, bulging with software and support, is a great headache curer.

Of course, the 4P is transportable, marginally more so that the Osborne, but considerably less so than the Macintosh, which doesn't even make a virtue of this feature. And with prices for second-hand Osbornes shaving the BBC B, this probably isn't a fruitful area to look for competition.

Even so, the price is a considerable stumbling block. You can pay £1,500 for a Tandy 4P, and have to shell out considerably more for applications software, or you can look at a machine like the Wren, which costs only £1,000 and comes with bundled software. The only other weight in the scales is Tandy's network of shops.

The machine itself is reliable, and if you want an absolute, sure-fire workhorse micro with lots of software and dealer support, money no object, it would probably be a good buy.