From: aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan Glover)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Acorn Press Release 6 of 8 (A3000 range)
Date: 27 Aug 92 10:30:10 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

Acorn Extends Best-Selling A3000 Range


Acorn Computers is complementing its best-selling A3000
computer with two new and enhanced models designed to meet
the growing needs of both consumer and educational users at
aggressively reduced prices.  The A3010 series has been
designed with the home user in mind, whilst the A3020s have
been produced for the Education market. 

The A3010 and A3020 are both driven by the new ARM250
microprocessor from Advanced RISC Machines. This runs at
12MHz and delivers 6 MIPs (millions of instructions per
second) - providing some 1.4 times the performance of a
33MHz 386DX.  The ARM 250 was purpose designed for Acorn and
integrates an ARM 2 processor with the other controller
chips in one small device.   The new computers all  feature
a 2MByte floppy disc drive, a bi-directional parallel port,
full VGA monitor output, and Acorn's multitasking RISC OS 3
operating system.  They all have a serial port and an
expansion slot provided to allow the connection of other
devices such as video cameras, scanners or MIDI instruments. 

The A3010 has a grey case and green function keys, and was
designed following feedback from the consumer market place.
Reflecting the needs of the home consumer, who wants to get
up and running straight away at the lowest possible cost, it
has a UHF TV modulator to allow the computer to be attached
directly to a TV screen and two ports for attaching switched
joysticks to enhance the playing of games. The A3010 offers
32-bit performance in a 1MB expandable system.  It is
available as part of both a new "Family Solution" and the
"Learning Curve". 

The A3020 is cream coloured with red function keys to
complement the styling of the leading products in the
education market. It has been designed by Acorn in response
to the changing and expanding needs of education,
particularly in the primary sector. The A3020 has internal
network interface sockets and hard drive support built on to
the circuit board allowing it to be fitted with a hard drive
and connected to a network and still have room for a
separate internal interface to be installed.

The new A3000 range exploits the wealth of software
available for home, education and business use - now in
excess of 2,000 titles. The multitasking environment of RISC
OS 3 - provided for the first time on the A3000 range -
allows applications to work together to provide a
tailor-made solution for the user. As with all of Acorn's
RISC computers, a suite of applications is provided with
each machine to the get the user started immediately. This
includes both a drawing and painting program, a text editor,
a desktop calculator, alarm clock and also music program
software.

The new "Family Solution"  is designed for those who are new
to computing. It consists of an A3010  together with a word
processor (EasiWord) and a game (Quest for Gold). To help
the inexperienced user, there is a comprehensive audio
training tape and a number of blank discs are provided to
complete the package. 

The "Learning Curve" comes with a range of software which is
designed to pull together the needs of computing in schools,
at the office and in the home. It is a complete system
comprising a colour monitor and an A3010 with 2MB of RAM. In
addition to the enclosures found in the "Family Solution"
there is a set of Genesis applications and a guide to the
National Curriculum. Acorn's PC Soft with DR_DOS 6  is also
provided to enable PC programs to be run by the parent
wishing to bring work home from the office. 

The educational range of A3020s have as standard 2MBytes of
RAM upgradeable to 4MB.  Reflecting the growing importance
of networking in all sectors of Education, the A3020
provides the facility for either Econet or Ethernet to be
fitted without the loss of the internal expansion slot. The
low cost A3020 2MB floppy disc model has the option of an
internal IDE 60MB hard disc. It also comes complete with a
choice of colour matched monitors. 

The new range of A3000s start at #424.68 (#499 inc VAT) for
the A3010 "Family Solution" and go up to #899 for the A3020
with 60 MB hard disc and colour monitor. 

Acorn's Marketing Director, Mike O'Riordan said "The new
A3000s have a competitive edge over other machines aimed at
the consumer and education markets in a number of key areas. 
For a start, they offer the lowest cost of access to the
power of RISC computing giving unrivalled performance for
their price. No other manufacturer in the world can
currently offer RISC computing for under #500!

"The A3020 was designed specifically for the education
market sector in which we have set the standards for the
past decade. We have always know that education has
differing needs over and above that of other markets, and
these new products have been specifically designed to meet
these needs.  " he added.

Acorn's Product Manager, Kevin Coleman said "These machines
offer superb value for money.  Not only is the initial
purchase price low, but the cost of ownership is low as
well. The prices of software and hardware add-ons are
extremely low when compared with similar quality products on
other platforms. In addition, with our new extended warranty
arrangements, customers have the added satisfaction of
knowing that in the unlikely event of something going wrong
help is always at hand.


Ends

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