386SX notebooks: the first wave. (Review of Reviews) (a flood of lightweight SX machines)(includes related article on Zenith Data Systems MastersPort 386SL) (buyers guide)

A mere 18 months ago, running Microsoft Windows 3.0 or crunching large spreadsheets on the road meant dragging along a 15-pound machine and an AC power pack. If you wanted freedom from wall stockets, you settled for a battery-operated 8086 or '286 system, some as svelte as 4 1/2 pounds but frequently missing such crucial components as a built-in floppy-disk drive or an internal modem.

Those days are history. Led by Compaq Computer Corp., notebook makers have embraced the 386SX processor with a passion, churning out machines that sport clock speeds of 16 or 20 MHz, as much as 4 megabytes of RAM, hard disks that hold up to 60 megabytes, internal 3 1/2-inch floppy drives, and VGA displays. Now you can play Windows solitaire at 30,000 feet and carry around 50 megabytes of financial data without fear of disk overload--all in a machine that weights less …