Interesting discussion on screen sizes, keyboards, etc. Many of us have various different opinions. My opinions have changed since the early days when some of us (the "older" ones) used 2260s instead of 3270s.
I am using a 21" screen at the moment, with three "windows" open on it. I would not want a larger screen and perhaps would prefer a slightly smaller one. I prefer a size that does not require me to constantly move my head to focus on different parts of the screen. For 3270 emulation I prefer 133 character width (and most of us probably agree on that) and at least 50 lines high (and this could vary somewhat). I find 17" laptop screens OK, but not great. More important for me (because I work mostly with text) is having good character resolution. Perhaps because I as not as young as I was a few years ago, I find long periods with crudely-formed characters to be more exhausting. Given a choice, I would say this is more important than the actual screen size. I am not fond of laptop keyboards --- IMO they range from barely OK to poor. At the moment I am using an old PC AT keyboard (with the "round" adapter plug going to a converter to connect it to a USB port). It has the numeric keypad (which I do not use) and has good "movement" of the keys that provides a positive feedback for an old guy like me. (The "real" 3270 terminals had great keyboards!) I can deal with the red "mouse control" on IBM-designed laptop keyboards when needed, but I prefer a "real" mouse (with the center "dial" function, if possible). I use the same glasses for reading books and for dealing with terminals -- I am lucky that they are fairly "weak" glasses. The discussion about z/OSMF? One of these months I will need to spend some time with it. These days I mostly use a relatively slow machine for z/OS and the performance is not attractive for z/OSMF. Bill Ogden ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
