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In article <3APR199212472732@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov>, bell@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (E. V. Bell, II - NSSDC/STX/GSFC/NASA - (301)513-1663)Op
 writes...
>In article <1992Apr3.155904.9132@cs.cornell.edu>, murthy@cs.cornell.edu
(Chet Murthy) writes...
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>I'm trying to figure out what to buy in the way of a laptop, and my
>>major consideration is whether I will be able to use it to write
>>papers.  So, my choices are:
>> 
>>PB140 + OzTeX
>>PB140 + TeXtures
>>PB170 + DEmacs + one of these
>>386/486 + emTeX
>> 
>>Now, my problem is of course, choosing.  I have heard that OzTeX is
>>slow on the PB140, and that it is only acdceptably fast on the PB170.
>>Ditto for TeXtures.  If so, then this is a really good reason to stick
>>with a 170.
>> 
>>But then the 170 is pretty expensive, and I have heard that the
>>386/486 machines are a good bit faster.  So perhaps I should get one
>>of those.  All this depends on the performance of TeX on these
>>machines.  I don't have any feel for that.  Does anybody out there
>>have any experience with this?
>> 
>>Thanks,
>>--chet--
> 
>Yes, I use OzTeX V1.4 on a PowerBook 140. Although using OzTeX on the 
>PB140 is clearly slower than using it on my Mac IIci in the office, I 
>still wouldn't be without it. At the moment, I'm more RAM limited and
>battery limited than I am disappointed with the performance. However, 
>the advantage that I gain by using the same package at my office and 
>on the portable makes it up to me.
> 
>My basic question is how fast do you need it to be? I only use OzTeX 
>on the PB140 to work on document formats when I'm away from the 
>office. If you're going to be using the portable to be doing work in 
>the office as well, then you might experience problems...I've never 
>bothered to print from the PowerBook, for example. I've got a bigger 
>problem with the amount of space the PK files take up on the disk. 
>I've reduced them quite a bit, but still they're a major disk hog.
> 
>In any case, I'm satisfied with the performance I get with OzTeX on
>the portable. After all, it's better than lugging my IIci home when I
>need to work on documents. As with any use of the PowerBooks, however,
>you should get no less than 4MB of RAM, more is even better. 
> 
    Just to show you Goddard Space Flight Center isn't a complete monolith,
I use Textures on a PB170, and it's plenty fast, both in normal typeset
mode for longer documents, and with Lightning Textures for near-real-time
WYSIWYG for shorter documents. With the CM fonts from Blue Sky, it takes
up not much more space than a reasonable set of fonts for a DTP package
(only one font in the System for each typeface, instead of a PK file for
every font at every size); seems more natural for the Mac.
    Sorry, can't say how fast any 386/486 TeX implementations are; anec-
dotal evidence from friends (yeah, I talk to people who use DOS, but I
try to help them with their problem) is that commercial TeX implementations
are quite fast, even on 286's.

				Joe Gurman
				Solar Data Analysis Center / Code 682
				NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
				gurman@umbra.gsfc.nasa.gov
				NSI/DECnet:	uvsp::gurman