I took the Quantum Leap! I liked the computer so much I bought the company! No, I didn’t have the sixteen million dollars.
All kidding aside, I liked the QL so much I took it and my printer to my daughter’s to help her finish a term paper. After we had the paper ready to turn in the next day, I decided to leave my QL and printer with her until I could get her a set.
We were using the QL, Spirit 80 printer and a Sears 12″ B&W Monitor/TV with a monochrome monitor cable, plugged into a three outlet surge protector w/switch. The whole rig can be switched off or on at one time.
Loading was simple. Switch on. Insert microdrive program cartridge in drive 1 and a file or formatted cartridge in drive 2. To boot, press Fl or F2 and watch program load in about 10 seconds. If you do not remember the name of your document, press F3 (command), “1” (LOAD), and “?” (directory). The directory with number of unused sectors is displayed in the upper left corner. Type in File name and ENTER. File is loaded in a few seconds. NO CASSETTE RECORDER or TAPES to worry with. NO “TAPE LOADING ERROR”.
Before we finished, she said, “Daddy, Quill has made me hate Tasword and _ the 2068!” The next day, I took out a loan and sent for her a QL and printer. Bob Dyl of English Micro Connection had my QL delivered on the 18th of December.
I am editor of the Stroke Club bulletin and needed a user friendly filing system that would keep all club records and print mailing labels. I used to print my labels on the TS-2068 with a brute force BASIC program. That is because I could never make heads or tails of Masterfile.
When I ordered the QL from EMC, I told Bob Dyl that I needed to drive a parallel printer. He sent the QL with a Kempston Centronics interface. I had to have my RGB cable made locally.
The print driver, for most printers, is on the program cartridge and very simple to modify for the Spirit 80 printer. My printer was up and running in no time.
Since most of my time has been spent using Quill, my reactions to the QL are flavored by it. If you are wanting to write letters and memos of 1000 words or less (about 5 double spaced pages) the basic QL and Quill is fine; otherwise the QL needs more on-board memory.
I have a mental handicap caused by two strokes. I have to have a word processor in order to write. The QL and Quill have made my life infinitely easier than the TS 2068 and Tasword or Wafadrive and SpectralWriter.
My early problems with the QL stemmed from mental handicaps. Richard Cravy and others have steered me in the right direction and I have forgotten some of the early obstacles I had to overcome.
I find the QL Users Guide with its 400 pages very easy to understand and follow. I think a beginner will find SUPERBASIC easier than BASIC to program in. I find it that way. I have entered all the stroke club names and addresses into MAIL LIST and will try to print the mail labels from it for next month’s mailing. At the present my printer is 50 miles away at my daughter’s.
The biggest factor in my buying the QL was economic. When I priced what it would cost me to upgrade my 2068 to what was standard equipment on the QL, I could pay for the QL and have a 32 bit computer to boot. The straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing the QL in RGB (80 column) on a SEAR’s Total Video System. There were no squiggles. The Sear’s B&W monitor is just as sharp in monochrome.
My daughter is in her senior year, last semester at the University of Florida. She is a beginner at computers but took to the QL like a “duck to water” after that day when I helped her get her class paper prepared to turn in. I typed (two finger) while she wrote. When she finished the writing she (a touch typist) finished typing the last 6 of 17 double-spaced pages. The two most important things I taught her was how to hyphenate and how to call the HELP FILE.
My advice, unless you are a_ game addict, is to buy a QL when you are ready to move up from your present computer.