14 - THE CANBERRA TIMES, MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1986
• alaaaaaaltrPtITERS iv IECMOLCO941•1•DaSIIMISS aPC battle forstraitenedschool market
By CHRIS PETERSSO )Q87 is Just about upon us, andlike a Real Computer Writer whoseems to have more bravery thansense I ought to make some new-year
predictions about the personal-computer industry.
It is. I suppose, best to start withsomething that seems most likely toeYentuate and keep the more
speculative predictions to last ... soI predict that next year will see anupsurge in the use of personal computers both in the home and inschools.
On the Australian home front.
Commodore h4 family packs havebeen selling like hot cakes this Christmas (about 11.000 units. Commodoresays). In the classroom, there is noticeably increased activity alreadyamong computer manufacturers in
the push to place their machines inschools.
Apple has just completed a mammoth mailing of its excellent Australian Educational Software Directory to every school in Australia. A
sign of the penetration of Macintoshes into schools is the 1-page,eL non on Mac software at the backor the directory.
IBM has been visiting education
offices throughout the country. including the O'Connell Education
Centre at Griffith. in a hopeful attempt to place more IBM JXs inWhooklR\l sees itself ousting Barson
Computers. distributors of the BBCcomputer. and taking over second
place (to Apple) with the IBM JX.
However. 1987 won't see a returnto the heady days of 1983-84 wheneven one rushed to buy a computer.
The hardware companies had cony inced people that they could doanything with a computer — evenmend a broken leg —and that parents
who didn't bus one to help their kid's
schooling were neglecting their children. Now they are more reasonable.
The prediction of which I am mostcertain, and unfortunately it's notgood news for ACT schools, is that
there will be a drop in the standardof consultant-backed servicing ofCanberra schools from the O'Connell
Education Centre. The curriculum
department has had to reduce thenumber of computer consultantsfrom six to two because of funding
cuts.
I hope I am not a Cassandra when
I predict that, unless the Government— which initiated computer education in the ACT — is able to renew
at least some of its funding, there isgoing to be a real hardware problem
toward the end of 1986 when some ofthe schools which were first to begin
computer education three or fouryears ago need to replace their wornout machines.
Now a look at the PC scene ingeneral.
Commodore will bring a more
powerful Amiga into Australia nextyear, complete with a built-in Sidecar(the .Amiga's IBM emulator) and at
least one megabyte of RAM.
I also predict that there will be a big
push by Commodore into the desktop

publishing and computer-aided design (CAD) fields, with several thirdparty desktop publishing and design
software packages being offered for
the Amiga at prices set to make competitors wince.
I predict (not quite so fearlessly)that many developers of businesssoftware, particularly the larger companies. will follow Microsoft's leadand begin selling unprotected programs. Those that don't, will, I predict, lose quite a lot of business to thecompanies that do.
Apple will introduce a brand-new
Macintosh with open architecture.
colour, a card developed at MIT withmyriad slots (well, about six), a
Motorola 68881 co-processor intandem with the Motorola 68020
processor.
The new Macintosh won't be called
the Milwaukee (as was intended) but
the Pans. After all, if a company
employs a French computer genius —Jean-Louis Gasse — to work on thedevelopment of a machine it's notgoing to be so crass as to name it after
a beer town. A further prediction isthat the Pans will be launched in
March and not, as is usual with Apple
launches, at the shareholders' meetingin January.
It is likely that 1987 will be the yearof CD (compact disc) ROM as more
and more software houses and hardware manufacturers climb on to thecompact disc technological bandwaggon.
Already there are quite a few programs being written for Compact Disc
ROM, and companies such as Electronic Arts have spent a great amountof money and more than a little time
researching the use of CD ROM andCDI.
Desktop publishing will be commonplace in 1987, which will also see
the spread of text and graphic scanning devices which digitise printed
matter and feed it into computers
before it is saved to disc, word-processed and then reprinted and published.
The price of good scanning equipment is already falling in the UnitedStates. The Omni-Reader, for instance, which will scan text and readit into most word processors, hasrecently had a price drop fromSUS799 to SUSI99. It seems very
likely that it won't be long before theprice is within easy reach of Australian classrooms and homes as well
as offices.
The next prediction is the really
dodgy one.
I predict that IBM will either
change the operating system of its PCs
and move away from PC (MS) DOS
to something entirely different, leaving MS DOS to the IBM clones. Or
it will move out of the PC market
altogether. Or it will declare war on
the clones and try to drive them fromthe market. Or it will do absolutely
nothing at all and try to maintain thestatus quo.
One thing is absolutely certain: noone at IBM is going to say a word toanyone about anything. As usual.