From: lithgow@toy.usl.com (Malcolm Lithgow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Acorn's New Babies
Date: 31 Aug 92 04:18:40 GMT

Well!

After the flood of Acorn announcements it was interesting to read the
reactions. Quite a few were very predictable. Some were not.

Here's mine:

Congratulations Acorn!

Unlike a lot of the people on this newsgroup, you know what you are doing!

The advice that I gave a couple of weeks ago seems to have been similar
to Acorn's thinking. (I don't want to say, 'I told you so', but I did.
;->)

In reply to those whinging about a lack of high-end machines -- wake
up! This is a world-wide recession! Acorn is showing their smarts by
releasing low-end, cheap machines that can still bring in a decent
profit, especially with their (hopefully) high volume sales. Releasing
a high-end machine right now would be rather pointless -- not many
people would buy it, and the pound is currently ridiculously
overvalued, making exports difficult for Acorn, so it wouldn't do well
overseas, either.

The AUN sounds like it's coming along well. And hard disk sizes for the
A5000 are finally starting to sound more impressive.

As for pricing -- it looks very good to me. The Amiga 600 can be
nothing but a vastly inferior machine and is only slightly cheaper. All
that remains is to put together a really good demo to convince
on-the-spot shoppers that the A3010 is worth the extra. The demo should
maybe have 'this is the A600 and this is the A3010 doing the same
thing' bits, with the A600 versions doing it in lower resolution and a
lot slower. ;-)

The overall product announcement was very impressive, too. If Acorn can
live up to these words, I think we can look at the Acorn market share
increasing a lot.

The only not-so-impressive part of the announcement (though I don't
intend to buy any of the new machines -- only the A4 holds interest for
me at the moment, Oh, and RISC OS 3 of course) was the Pocket Computer
thingy. This is a reasonable marketing move, I suppose, and Psion's
Series 3 *is* the best in its class *at the moment*, but I don't think
it lives up to Acorn's technical excellence, and doesn't really
integrate with their product range. (The WP's data format is Microsoft
Word, the language is an extension of Psion's whatever-it-is instead of
BBC BASIC, and the CPU isn't even remotely related to an ARM!) Oh
well.  I suppose something has to replace the Z88, eh? How about
something to compete with the Newton?

(BTW, to those who complained that the new machines are not really a
new product range -- surprise, surprise! IBM hasn't released a new
range of machines into the PC market place since 1981, when they
released the original IBM PC/XT. The PS/2 is simply an improvement on
the AT architecture, and the AT is an even smaller improvement on the
XT.  Apple hasn't release a new architecture since 1984, when they
released the Mac -- the Mac II is merely an improvement. The PowerPC
will be the first new release for Apple for a long time, and maybe for
IBM, too. Commodore hasn't had a new architecture since 1985, and Atari
hasn't had any success with the TT. I'm not sure whether the Falcon
could be classed as a new architecture.

Acorn, with two entire architectures to their credit since 1981,
doesn't seem to be doing that bad to me.)

Anyway, well done Acorn! Keep it up. I'm sure that, after these new
machines have been rolled out, everyone can get on with the next round
of juicy, world-beating stuff. ;-)

-Malcolm.  lithgow@usl.com  These are merely my opinions.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn