"The mouse can be very annoying because you have to get up to use it," Dvorak says.

"The reason for the detachable keyboard is so you can lie back and get comfortable instead of hunching over a desk. But with the mouse you have to get up and move it on the desk. I guess you can run it up and down on your thigh, but after a while it might become very endearing," he adds.

The mouse accounts for the main difference between the Macintosh and other personal computers: It is "visually-oriented," not word oriented."

Instead of entering words to command the computer, the user chooses from a menu of picture and selects one by pressing the mouse.

The cut-rate Macintosh should be available to students late this spring or by next tall, administrators say (see accompanying article).

Although the latest quoted discount for the machine puts the price at $1300, officials have confirmed that the cost will probably fall closer to $1000.

The 23 other schools participating in the consortium include Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

Harvard has other marketing agreements with IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation, whose machine it sells through its Equipment Management Store at 23 to 27 percent discounts.

These, however, cover only marketing and not software development.