Try This Guide For The Maze Of Pc Machines

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday November 24, 1986

by Phil Cohen

THERE are any number of suppliers in the personal computer field. If you are not of a nervous disposition, you could go one cheaper than any of the prices listed here and buy a no-name Taiwanese clone (try Chinatown) but service and support may be a problem.

This guide to PCs is in alphabetical order.

COMMODORE: Commodore is presently struggling with several areas of the PC market. Most people know the company for its small games machines; many know it for its newly-released Amiga high-end graphics and sound computer; and then there are the PC10 and PC20 clones.

The difference between the 10 and the 20 is that the 20 has a 20-megabyte hard disc, and has an RRP of $3,000. The PC10 has an RRP of $2,000. For this you get a solid little machine with two floppies, 640K of RAM, a colour graphics controller, parallel and serial interfaces, and four vacant expansion slots (three on the PC20).

To this you will have to add only a monitor to get a workhorse machine that will be ideal for tasks such as word processing and accounting_although not ideal for spreadsheeting and graphics because they both use a standard low clock speed of 4.77 MHz.

COMPAQ: Compaq is the company that produced the first "luggable"IBM-compatible computer. By luggable, I mean that it takes a strong arm to lift it, so you would not call it portable. It is also the company that released the first 80386 computer, and is generally regarded as being the major PC compatible manufacturer.

Compaq's desk-top compatible is called the Deskpro, and it has an RRP of just more than $3,500 for a machine with one 360K floppy, 128 of RAM, a monochrome monitor included, a parallel interface and six available expansion slots. That is not too bad, considering that Compaq has just about the best name in the business for PC compatibles.

DICK SMITH/MULTITECH: It seems there are clones and there are clones. The Dick Smith company has long been renowned for importing very cheap hardware of the lowest reasonable quality. Multitech is actually a Taiwanese company, and the PC-500 and PC-700 are made in Taiwan.

But Multitech is not a little backroom operation_it's quite a sizable concern_so its products are a cut above the real Taiwanese copies. The PC-500 is a very cheap machine, with the major limitation that there is only one expansion slot left after the machine has been set up.

It comes with 256K of RAM and can be expanded only up to 512K. With one 360K floppy and a monochrome monitor, it costs around $1,600. The PC-700 is a step-up from the PC-500, and uses a higher clock speed of eight MHz (the PC-500, and uses 4.77 MHz). It has six expansion slots, comes complete with 640K of RAM, and sells for $600 more than the PC-500. When sold with a hard disc, it comes with six months' on-site service_which sets it apart from the other clones if nothing else does.

EPSON: Epson is the printer manufacturer, and about as big in printers as it is possible to be in that market. With the release of the Epson PC, the company suprised a lot of people by bringing out a machine that was solid, looked reliable, had good backup, and was cheap.

The Epson PC has a street price of about $2,800 for a machine with two floppies, 512K of RAM, serial and parallel interfaces. To get a working machine, you would have to add a graphics controller and monitor, which would bring the price up to about $3,500.

Although this no longer sounds cheap, remember that this is a machine made by a major player in the PC game, a company that is not going to go broke overnight, and one which is used to servicing equipment in the field after years of looking after its own printers.

As a computer, the Epson PC is not bad_one major flaw being that it has only two available expansion slots. The difference between the PC and the PC+is that the PC+ has a higher clock speed (7.16 MHz, as opposed to 4.77 MHz)and comes with 640K of RAM. The PC+ costs $1500 more than the PC.

KAYPRO: The Kaypro PC is a nice, full-featured machine at a reasonable price. There is nothing special about it; it's just the right hardware at the right price. It comes with two 360K floppies, an eight MHz clock speed, 256K of RAM, six available expansion slots, serial and parallel interfaces and a real-time clock, all for an RRP of $2,495. There is a hard-disc version (20 megabytes) for an extra $800. LEADING EDGE: The Leading Edge PC costs $3,145 for a machine with a monochrome monitor, one floppy, 640K of RAM, serial and parallel interfaces, four expansion slots, and a real-time clock. That is not a very exciting price, so the PC fits right into the middle of the clone market.

MICROBEE/MITAC: Like Dick Smith, Microbee is an Australian company. And like Multitech (the company that makes the PC clone sold by Dick Smith), Mitac is a Taiwanese company. The "Microbee/Mitac Portable Pc" is a little bit of a misnomer_it's not actually a portable.

These days, "portable" means that you can operate the machine on your lap and you cannot do that with the Portable. However, it is very small for a compatible, with a rather cramped keyboard built into the main unit (instead of being attached by a cable), as well as a 360K floppy. It is probably an ideal "home" machine for people who have to work after hours_although it's an IBM compatible, it's easy to stow away in a cupboard when you are not using it.

Microbee is also promising an LCD screen soon. The price for the portable with 256K of RAM, no monitor, real-time clock, two serial and one parallel interfaces is $1,495.

NEC: NEC has sold a lot of its APC III machines into what are called"vertical markets"_places where compatibility with IBM PC software is not all that important because the machine was going to run only one piece of very specialist software such as an accounting package designed for pharmacists, or a database designed for auto repairers. When it was first released, the APC III was not IBM-compatible, and it was not until NEC saw the writing on the wall_the complete dominance of the PC marketplace by the IBM PC and its compatibles_that it decided to do something about it. It came up with what it calls a "Software Library Expander," a plug-in card that makes the APC III more or less completely IBM compatible. Except of course that you cannot plug IBM-compatible expansion cards into it. Not only that. Because of the cost of the extra hardware, the APC III is not a cheap machine, at an RRP of $3,884 for a machine with two 1.2-megabyte floppy-disc drives, 384K or RAM, a monochrome monitor, the SLE card, serial and parallel interfaces. OLIVETTI: If you want something that is styled well, go to the Italians. The Olivetti M19 is one of the smallest clones around, and one of the quietest (33 dBA maximum) as it has no cooling fan. Although the M19 will run most MS-DOS software, it is not hardware compatible_that is, it cannot be fitted with expansion cards from any manufacturer other than Olivetti. Also, at an RRP of$3,400 (256K of RAM, one 360K floppy, serial and parallel interfaces, monochrome monitor) it is not particuarly cheap.

Optional expansions include a non-standard Olivetti mouse and a dual-speed kit which can increase the clock speed to eight MHz. The M24 addresses most of the problems that the market found with the M19. For a start, there are seven standard expansion slots in the machine.

Also, it uses an eight-MHz chip as standard, which means that it runs faster than the M19 (and faster than the IBM PC as well). Again, it's not cheap, at an RRP of $5,510 for a machine with only 128K of RAM, a monochrome monitor (although a colour graphics controller is included), one 360K floppy, serial and parallel interfaces. The hard-disc version of the M24 is called the M24SP, and has a 20-megabyte hard disc, one 360K floppy, and a higher clock speed of 10 MHz. TANDY: For this month and next, Tandy is selling its Tandy 1000 machines at a very low price_so low, in fact, that I suspect it knows something we do not. I am not implying that there is anything wrong with the 1000, but rather that there are other machines around the corner which will be more attractive. Still, it's difficult to go past an offer of a Tandy 1000 with a general-purpose business software package, a colour monitor and a cheap dot matrix printer for $2,100. The computer on its own with a monochrome monitor is selling for $1,499. However, bear in mind that this machine has only two expansion slots available, and that they will not fit all IBM-compatible expansion cards. Also, the 1000 has only 128K of RAM and one 360K floppy.

ZENITH: Not as well known in Australia as they are in the United States, Zenith has been very successful in selling its PC AT compatibles_in particular, it landed one historic contract to supply 90,000 of them to the US Government.

Zenith has two PC compatible models available here, the Z148 and Z158. The two look very similar on paper, both come with 256K of RAM and have an eight-MHz clock speed. The only immediately visible difference is that the Z158 has one 360K floppy drive, while the Z148 has two.

Which do you think is the more expensive? Wrong _ the Z158 is the more costly, at an RRP of $4,725. The Z148 has an RRP of $3,549.

What is the secret? The Z148 does not have IBM-compatible expansion slots, while the Z158 has five. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with the Z148; it just shows how important it is to read the small print.