The Paper Chasers

for undergrads with straight-a ambitions, here's a dean's-list guide to electronic quick-study equipment

Campus traditions die hard, especially the one about having to burn midnight oil while poring over homework problems or pecking away at a typewriter on the following day's term paper. But just as surely as the 20th Century light bulb has replaced the oil lamp, small computers and other microelectronic technologies of the pre-21st Century are starting to send much of study's drudgery back to the Dark Ages, leaving more time for pleasurable pursuits.

The transformation has already happened offcampus. Business people whip up complex financial analyses at the press of a button and then head for the tennis club. At home, the programmable video-cassette recorder has liberated folks from the fetters of TV-network time schedules. And now, high-tech advances in low-cost desktop and portable computers, college-level

Below, left to right: The two-timing jock who's doubled his cheerleading pleasure definitely isn't strapped for smarts; he's holding a Soundpacer portable cassette recorder that allows tape recordings to be played back at up to twice regular speed while keeping the voice pitch normal, by The Variable Speech Control Company, $219. Under his foot is an Apple II Plus computer that has an Apple III monitor hooked up to it; the unit features a 48K random-access memory that can be expanded to 64K (that's a lot of memory, jock), $1530 for the Apple II Plus, $249 for the Apple III monitor and $645 for a disk drive (not shown). On the screen of the Apple II Plus is Introduction to Organic Chemistry, by COMPress, $350 for a seven-disk set. The coed on the losing end of a hirsute tug of war is toying with an ultraportable high-tech Compass computer that features an unusually large memory capacity, a flat video display and a 57-key keyboard, by Grid Systems, $8150. Under her chair is a pocket-sized IXO Telecomputing System that gives instant access to data banks around the country, $500, plus $125 for a phone interface. The tall, dapper scholar is holding a Sony Typecorder Portable Office System (designed to interface with a printer and/or a home computer system) on which one can recall and edit an entire page of copy, as well as stash up to 100 pages on a single microcassette, $1450 for the Type-corder, $275 for an acoustic coupler. His close friend has latched on to the base unit of Panasonic's Handheld Computer system, which can be tailored to one's specific needs, $380, a complete system (which might include base unit, phone modem, charger, 15-character printer, interface, TV adapter and briefcase) about $2000. Although the paddle-wielding, hair-pulling undergrad prankster is up to monkey business, the business-oriented BA-55 calculator, $60, and companion PC-200 printer, $70, on his desk are serious stuff, definitely a plus in banking/finance courses, both by Texas Instruments. Under the chair: a Hewlett-Packard HP-41CV alpha-numeric fully programmable hand-held calculator that communicates with the user in words as well as numbers, $325, plus $550 for optional digital cassette drive and $495 for the printer shown. The all-collegiate nerd with brew and chips close at hand has also spent his pocket money on an HP-12C slim-line financial calculator that computes bond yield to maturity, depreciation, etc., by Hewlett-Packard, $150. The Frisbee flipper on the end flipped for the 9.6-ounce JVC MQ-5K microcassette stereo that records and/or plays back tapes of lectures, as well as favorite rock sounds, $179.95. personal-computer programs, hand-held calculators and innovative audio products may offer the best student aid since low-interest Federal loans.

One of the best examples of drudgery is slaving over a typewriter to get a paper done. But with so many word-processing options available today, you can save yourself a lot of grief, even if you're snowbound in Colorado when the post-Christmas-break essay is due. For example, Sony's $1450 Typecorder is no larger than an inch-and-a-half-thick pad of typing paper, yet it has a full-sized typewriter keyboard, a one-line 40-character liquid-crystal-display (LCD) readout and a microcassette recorder that can store up to 100 pages of your golden words (and doubles as a voice recorder for dictation). Make a typing mistake? Just backspace and type the right keys. Other keys allow you to review each line of a page, set margins and tabs and insert or delete characters where needed.

Once the opus is stored on tape, just hook up the Typecorder to the acoustic coupler, call your roommate back on campus and place the phone receiver on the coupler. At the other end, your roommate will connect his (or her) phone to the electric-typewriter-quality Sony Office Printer through its own telephone coupler. Your paper shoots out of the printer at 55 characters per second without a single erasure smudge.

You don't have to spend a fortune, however, to get the convenience of portable typewriting. For about $200, the Brother EP-20 Personal Electronic Printer offers electronic typing features found on office machines costing more than five times as much, yet in a silent-running, battery-operated printer that weighs in at just a hair over five pounds.

The EP-20 has not only the full keyboard you'd expect on any typewriter but also a couple of dozen special symbols, such as common Greek letters, foreign-currency and scientific symbols, and foreign-language punctuation marks. The fumble-fingered typist gets a second chance by seeing up to 16 characters in a big LCD readout before they're committed to paper. Wrong letters can be deleted, missed ones can be inserted in the display. Print quality on plain paper is equivalent to that of inexpensive ''dot matrix'' computer printers. The unit has a built-in recessed carrying handle, comes with a hard-cover lid and an A.C. adapter. They even found room to throw in a four-function calculator.

Miniaturization has also helped bring full-power word processing to affordable, small desktop computers such as the Apple II, the IBM Personal Computer and two TRS-80s, by Radio Shack. With the Radio Shack Model III, you can not only obtain a cleanly typed paper but have it checked for errors in spelling and grammar as well.

The Model III is a self-contained desktop computer with built-in cathoderay-tube monitor and two floppy-disk drives (into which you slip the prewritten computer programs). Radio Shack's Super Scripsit program turns the computer into a word processor so you can type your text onto the screen, make changes, move paragraphs, set margins and store the final product on a disk for editing later if you like. Next, slide in the Scripsit Dictionary program, and your paper is checked against a 73,000-word spelling dictionary. If there's an error, the computer will show you where you went wrong and make the correction for you.

Then, to cover all bases, put in The Electronic Chicago Manual of Style program, by Dictronics Publishing Inc. This program checks your paper for other grievous faults that make professors wince with pain. Your verbiage is compared with 500 of the most frequently abused phrases. If one of those phrases appears, you're shown on the screen what you wrote, why it's incorrect (e.g., a capitalization or punctuation error, improper usage, a redundant phrase) and what you can use instead. You have the option of making a change or sticking with your peculiar style. All that's left is to print out the paper on real (i.e., nonerasable) bond paper with Radio Shack's Daisy-Wheel II word-processing printer for a look of painstakingly precise typing.

We've even heard of such portable computers as the Osborne I showing up at law schools to help with the writing of essay exams. The professors, of course, were curious about whether or not any prewritten material had been stored on the disks. And it must have been unnerving for blister-fingered pen-pushing classmates to see an hour's worth of answers come spewing out from a small dot-matrix printer at 400 words per minute right before the bell. If the trend continues, classroom seats next to power outlets will be at a premium.

There will certainly be more full-scale portable computers to come, if we can judge by the $8150 Compass Computer, by Grid Systems Corporation. Weighing only nine and a quarter pounds and taking up only half a briefcase, the Compass contains more active memory than most of today's personal computers can handle, plus a futuristic flat-panel video display. Students in the real 21st Century just may be able to buy such a computer for 500 inflated dollars.

While the initial investment in even a 1982 personal computer is somewhat higher than a weekend's beer money, there are college-level applications beyond word processing that will help justify the cost. A number of educational programs (software packages) have been created for popular personal computers.

Atari's conversational-foreign-language series, for its model 400 and model 800 computers, provides spoken-word examples on the program cassette tape. That way, you can hear how the language should be pronounced, but you're on your honor to re-create the sounds as best you can. Vocabulary is reinforced with graphic examples on the screen, and brief quizzes appear at the end of the section. Each course consists of five cassettes, with sets for French, German, Spanish and Italian.

From foreign languages we go to science, for which Introduction to Organic Chemistry, from COMPress, turns an Apple II computer into a personal chemistry lecture and lab. Video graphics stored on the program's seven floppy disks demonstrate various concepts, and you perform experiments on the screen instead of blowing up the chemistry building.

In answer to those who believe that college doesn't prepare students for life in the real world, there is a simulation of corporate intrigue called, subtly enough, Conglomerates Collide, by Rock-Roy, Inc., for use on the Apple II computer. This thinking man's game leads you through a world of big business deals and acquisitions as they are affected by late-breaking news of technology developments and other factors.

And if you're thinking of putting off your launch into the real world by going on to graduate school instead, the graduate record exam (G.R.E.) standard test may be looming large on the horizon. Krell Software Corporation offers a helping hand with a program for TRS-80, Apple II, Commodore PET, IBM and Atari computers that drills you on the kinds of questions you'll meet on the actual exam. The G.R.E. series has 35 programs covering vocabulary, word relationships, reading comprehension, mathematics, analytical reasoning and logic diagrams. If you had known only a little earlier, you might have purchased the company's S.A.T. series and made it into the real college of your choice.

Today's student can also save valuable hours of research while preparing material for papers dealing with current political events and social problems. There's no need to bury yourself (continued on page 202)Paper Chasers(continued from page 122) in the library when so much of the raw material is available in consumer-oriented computer data banks. The Source, an information bank owned by Reader's Digest, is linked up with the wire of the United Press International (U.P.I.). You have the opportunity to tap into the same U.P.I. news wire that goes to your local newspaper. You specify a search subject (e.g., disarmament) and the data bank will display relevant U.P.I. news dispatches from correspondents all around the world, including stories that will appear in the next morning's newspaper. And since the stories come directly from the wire, they won't be edited to suit your local paper's political slant. It's one way to keep a step ahead of the rest of the class--and maybe the instructor, too.

To gain access to these dial-up services, you'll need one of the personal computers we've mentioned and a telephone coupler or, perhaps, an ultraportable computer terminal such as Panasonic's Hand-held Computer system (also available under the Quasar brand), neatly packaged in a James Bond-style briefcase, or a remarkable paperbacksized keyboard terminal with one-line LCD display, from IXO, Inc., with a matching telephone adapter. If the wire to your telephone has the standard miniplug connector, simply unplug it from the phone and plug it into the telecomputer. Otherwise, use the matching telephone adapter, even at a pay phone. With the IXO telecomputer, you can store ahead of time the local-access phone number, so all you do is enter your password and--presto!--you're on line. A few more buttons and you're reading hot news about your subject just placed on the U.P.I. wire from reporters on the scene.

There is time to be saved, too, in the day-in, day-out study rituals and exam preparations, thanks to several advances in portable-tape-recorder technology. Until now, recording lectures simply eliminated the agony of translating the prof's verbiage into spiral-bound books of chicken scratches affectionately called notes. But to retrieve the essence of a taped lecture required sitting through the whole tape. To the rescue comes a technological marvel that lets you double the speed of the tape (cutting listening time in half) while keeping the prof's voice close to its normal pitch instead of Alvin the Chipmunk's. The Soundpacer, by The Variable Speech Control Company, looks like an ordinary portable cassette player, takes ordinary cassettes and has a built-in condenser microphone for recording at regular speed. Playback speed is continuously variable from 80 percent of normal to twice normal, with commensurate pitch correction in fast speed. An adapter that accepts dictation-sized microcassettes is available as well.

We'd probably leave the Soundpacer in our room for study time and take a recorder that doubled as a stereo-cassette player to class. For regular-sized cassettes, Sony's new Recording Walkman is one of the smallest we've seen so far. Modeled on the popular and compact Walkman 2 stereo player, the new model adds a pair of microphones built into opposite ends of the case to record live performances in stereo. Between classes, just drop in a Chariots of Fire cassette and you've got a mighty stereo sound coming through the lightweight headphones.

But if you like to travel really light, a microcassette recorder is in order. Microtape formulations and recorder electronics have improved voice-sound quality on units from Radio Shack, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba. Or you can take part in the hi-fi future with JVC's MQ-5K microcassette recorder/player with its clever one-piece plug-in stereo microphone. So far, prerecorded stereo microcassettes are pretty hard to come by, but you can use the JVC unit to transfer your albums to stereo microtape.

The daily grind for many students also includes math--an area for which advanced pocket electronics has many timesaving aids. Casio's thin CS-821 LCD wrist chronograph has a tendigit four-function minicalculator built in. The numerical keys are big enough and well enough spaced to allow fingertip operation, unlike those in other units that require a special stylus to press the microbuttons. You've simply got to remember not to press the wrong button or an alarm will sound off in the middle of an exam.

Calculator math plays a big role in business school, with financial and statistical chores around every corner. Texas Instruments' BA-55 Professional Business Analyst financial calculator performs just about every time and money calculation you're likely to meet--saving you from thumbing through pages and pages of tables. You also have the option of a companion battery-operated printer, the low-profile PC-200, which prints out your calculations with detailed audit trail at two lines per second. The calculator comes with both the Professional Business Analyst Guide and a pocketable quick-reference guide. Also on the financial scene is Hewlett-Packard's HP-12C, a pocket-sized LCD calculator that lets you store solutions to frequently encountered problems, thus saving key strokes in the process.

Anyone in a real number-crunching course will find a pal in a programmable calculator such as Hewlett-Packard's HP-41C or expanded-memory-version HP-41CV. The HP-41 is practically a hand-held computer, featuring an LCD display that can prompt you through problems in plain English. All you do is put in the givens and out pops the answer. The company offers many plug-in program modules for business and engineering applications. But the diligent student could quickly learn how to program the HP-41 (it's easier than real computer programming) to save hours on homework and exam problems. You could even use the same unit and its constant memory as an electronic little black book of names, phone numbers and other personal statistics. As your inventory grows, you can load the file onto the optional mass-memory tape drive and use the printer in conjunction with a custom program to help you schedule your next month's dates.

At the rate technology is going, the 21st Century may be the age of computerized robots who can sit in for you at lectures and exams while you're out cultivating the more important social experiences of college life.

''Math is an area for which advanced pocket electronics has many timesaving aids.''