1991 was quite the year for personal computing, with Windows 3.0 making headway and pushing the XT-level spec out of the market place. This allowed the 286 to have a brief time in the sun as the sweet spot between price and performance (the sub £1,000 home market at least) - albeit with an all too painful awareness that it wasn't exactly future proof. For this issue of PCW, however, the undoubted cover star was the Apple PowerBook 100, and deservedly so. That will come later, because as always, we begin with the news.
Novell take first spot with the introduction of Novell NetWare Lite, a (relatively) reasonably priced peer to peer networking option. Although limited in functionality to its more expensive cousins, it filled a need at that time, although that period was relatively short as networking was on it's way to becoming a "standard" OS inclusion at least as far as Windows was concerned. Other OS's had had such capabilities for quite a while.
Microsoft had two new packages to shout about: Microsoft Works for Windows and Microsoft Publisher. The former brought Works to the GUI world, rocking a word processor, spreadsheet, and data filing capabilities, whilst Publisher tackled that design favourite of the 80's and 90's, desktop publishing. You may laugh now, but back then, having the ability to design your own print materials (you do remember printing, right?) was seen as a game changer. Anyway, each cost £145, and the minimum spec for Works (Publisher's weren't listed) was a 286 running Windows 3 with 1Mb of RAM or better. No, gentle reader, you would NOT try that at home. Yes, the OS would "run", but you really needed 2Mb or more and, let's be honest here, a 386. Good thing that Works for MS-DOS was still available for those not willing/able to drop a grand plus (as you'll see later) on new hardware.
What in the world? PC World? Where in the world? Croydon. Well, you've got to start from somewhere, so why not? Taking the American concept of computer superstores, Vision Technology attempted to replicate the idea in the UK. Why would you pay more than mail order to have to travel to a store? Well, making use of your warranty for one thing - you could always go back to the shop. Knowledge (and some staff were very knowledgable if you were lucky) was another. As it turned out, Dixons would buy the chain of the then four stores in 1993, massively expand the footprint, then re-brand to mother company Currys Digital around 2006, and from 2010, carry the Currys PC World moniker until 2021. Not a bad run, it has to be said.
Adobe promised support for Quarterdeck's DesqView-X windowing system, to which all I can say is, "bless them", and "some you win, some you lose, and then there's some that needn't have bothered in the first place." What? You think Microsoft were in danger here??? Pshaw!
"Top men" (very Raiders of the Lost Ark sounding and also highly emblematic of the time) were talking about the Apple-IBM development deal, which tied in with the AIM alliance (Motorola being the third company), in developing a new multi-user, multi-tasking operating system. It's not exactly a spoiler to say that the software side of things did not work out, although the Power PC range of processors were a valid competitor to the x86 into the early years of the next century.
One of the joys of reading through magazines of yesteryear is finding news snippets like this - the PIC from General Magic. The Personal Intelligent Communicator was an attempt to put real time data in the hands of users via a pen-driven palmtop. No, it wasn't a proto-Newton, although the article does state that full cursive handwriting recognition would come later. Uh-huh. As it turned out, Apple never really got behind General Magic, despite what the article attempts to predict. General Magic's Magic Cap operating system would see the light of day in Sony's Magic Link and Motorola's Envoy PDA's, but never really took off. The tech was cool for the time, but expensive and rather bulky, and when the Newton did arrive, it too was criticised for its size, even though it was slightly smaller than either of the Magic Cap devices. The concept of a personal digital assistant would prove more popular with either a keyboard (Psion Series 3) or a more limited stylus functionality (the Palm OS menagerie), but you have to admire the bright sunlit uplands vibe of this report.
Portable fans were offered the news of Apple's Companion, an 11 by 6 inch two pound system with a full keyboard. Aimed at the same user as the Cambridge Z88, the device was never released. A couple of years later, we did get the aforementioned Newton, so make of that what you will.
For true power users, Dolch had released their PAC 486-50 "portable" - an 8.2kg behemoth (and it was mains only!), rocking the latest 50MHz 486, 8Mb of RAM, a 200Mb SCSI hard drive, a colour TFT display, and space for three full length EISA cards. Yours for just £13,790! Do you really want to know the 2025 price? Ok then: £32,000! Budget conscious peeps could swap the colour TFT for a gas plasma wonder to make the price a much more "palatable" £6,995. Other manufacturers were also joining the 486 rush - NEC's 20MHz SX number was yours for about six grand, and PM Associates' lappy was just £2,849, although the article declines to give specifications beyond it being a 486.
Road warriors were also being offered a portable satellite comms dish. Niche, given that it cost the best part of ten grand, but handy if you needed the capability. Speed was limited to 600 bits per second, and the data was charged at 63p per kilobit. Makes Virgin Media Fibre look almost a bargain.
There's a healthy three pages of letters, one of which caught my attention: a spirited defence of the Acorn Archimedes, as well as a carefully argued response from PCW. The letter writer isn't necessarily wrong in the support for the British machine, but the magazine's response rightly questions whether the total number sold (approximately 120,000 in four years against Apple selling 125,000 Mac Classics in one month), and the familiarity users would get with an Arc against a Mac or PC (Word for the latter two platforms being a good example) were enough to support the continued use of RISC OS, especially when it came down to preparing children for the jobs market.
Several pages of opinion pieces give way to the short reviews section, bringing up Elonex's LT-320X which, in case you couldn't have guessed, uses a 20MHz 386. The base model (2Mb RAM, 40Mb HD) would set you back £1,495 (ex VAT, of course) and received praise for the concept of removable hard drives. However, at 15lbs, it was bit of a chonk, even for the time.
Apricot's LANstation is another niche product, and a pricey one too. A 20MHz 386 backed up by 8Mb of RAM and a 100Mb hard drive sounds ok, but at £2,195, not great value. Still, for dedicated network uses, it was an option, and there is something to be said about the pleasing appearance of the machine.
The first feature takes the reader to Yorktown Heights and IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Centre. Quite informative, the bulk of the article focuses on the strengths and uses for Big Blue's RS/6000 system - the Power Visualisation System (data displays for a super computer) and virtual reality. Yeah... some concepts keep being flogged... What strikes me here is that although the PC side of the company (including OS/2) was burning at this point, they were still forging ahead with research and development. How times have changed...
The hardware group test takes in twenty 33MHz 486 towers. The format had its attractions, what with a compact footprint but room for expansion, and for power users or those who just wanted to bling their kit with drives and cards galore, they were the way forward, for the time at least. What I like about this round up is not only the clean layout, but also the performance graphs - given the number of computers on test, an easy way to see where each contender lay in the pack. And check out CompuAdd's results - oh dear!
We still get the traditional specification table, and from a quick glance, the cheapest of what are DX-powered (the SX chip minus the floating point unit would be along presently) machines started at £1,708 ex VAT (also excluding Windows and limited to 4Mb of RAM and a 124Mb hard drive) for the Micro Surgeons Eagle 486c to the frankly ludicrous Nokia (8Mb/8Gb) and Zenith (8Mb/360Mb) offerings coming in at a fiver below ten grand ex VAT! The Eagle was reasonable value for the low price, but the Nokia couldn't justify its tag, and the Zenith, an absolute massive unit, was a pricey server option. In any case, if you needed a fast 486, you were spoilt for choice, but within a year, those prices would have dropped considerably.
As for the winner, Dell's 433Se (32Mb/200Mb) at £6,234 ex walked away with it. Silver medals went to MJN's 486 Cache (£2,799 ex with 8Mb/210Mb), Solidisk's 486-33 EISA (£3,669 ex with 4Mb/320Mb) and the Zenith.
One last comment: the contents page has a wonderful lead in to the round up. Bask in the glory of what £80k ex VAT could have bought you back in '91. Put another way not even one third of an averagely priced house these days.
Apple takes a ten page bite out of the issue with their new machines, and to be fair to them, PCW led with the most striking of the lot - the PowerBook 100, yours for the bargain price of under £1,350 ex VAT. Compared to its Portable predecessor, the PB100 was quite the looker. Sure, it was a tad limited next to its more expensive siblings, the 140 and 170, but the more you paid, the more you got - internal floppy drives and faster 68030 chips on both, and an active matrix greyscale screen on the 170. For people after a basic Mac you could use of on the move for two to four hours (those Ni-Cad batteries were average for the day), the 16MHz 68000 of the PB100 would see you right. The author did note that the 140 and 170 lacked anywhere near the value of the base model, but it's Apple, right?
Portables were not the only fruit (apologies to Jeanette Winterson), as Apple was keen to show off its Quadra 900 tower - and although hard drive equipped prices were not mentioned, the floppy only model would be approximately £4,500. That, gentle reader, was a spec about as useful as a shoe shop in the Shire. The cheaper Quadra 700 had an estimated price of £4k ex VAT for a 4Mb/80Mb model. Power with a price!
Not that potential Mac users were entirely left out. The aforementioned and much loved Mac Classic was given an upgrade too. The handily named Classic II (easy day in the marketing department right there), popped in a 68030 for the previous 68000, and, in typical Apple fashion, although the 2Mb or RAM as standard was "enough," System 7.0 really liked 4Mb, so once more unto the chequebook, dear friends. Apple were also adding some printers and a scanner to their line up, but these seemed to be mere afterthoughts to the more exciting portable news.
To software now, and Winfax Pro promised to make faxing as easy as printing (and when in the ever loving arms of Cthulhu has that ever been easy???), whilst an interview with Gordon Eubanks of Symantec offers insights into its recent merger with Peter Norton Computing (yes, them!), and its plans for the future.
A round up of project management programs is of some interest, being a victim, apologies, a user of JIRA. In fact, after reading through this, I'd take any of the packages here over Just Irritates Really Awfully. As for the conclusion comments on some of the packages, well, dear hearts, I feel attacked. Attacked, I tell you!
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| That could have been my Q3 review, to be fair. |
DesqView 386 received a favourable review, and offered good value, at least until Windows NT could demonstrate its chops. No mater how good the competition though, Microsoft were on a roll in the early 90's and having the likes of IBM screw up OS/2 meant the other competitors, such as Quarterdeck's offering, were on a hiding to nothing.
Ah, here we go, my old friend. A review of the Psion Series 3, and as a recovery from the MC-range debacle, the Series 3 was a stunner. The reviewer obviously liked it, and the fact that the Series 3 would only be discontinued in 1998 after several improved models, demonstrated that Psion pretty much got the basics right first time - the 3a, 3c and 3mx were useful upgrades (especially the screen size), but the design stayed pretty much the same.
Book reviews cover such topics as designing minimalist instruction for practical computer skill (when such a thing was quite pertinent if you were a newbie), Pagemaker 4, and virtual reality. Yep, I'm repeating myself here, but nearly thirty five years later and it's still not there as a genuinely useful and productive piece of consumer tech.
Castles and Mario Andretti's Racing Challenge were your games for the month, and check out those software charts. The subtle differences between ST and Amiga, then Amiga and PC were symptomatic of how the three platforms were performing in relation to each other. It's clear that the PC was the home of the more demanding software, with the Amiga and ST kinda keeping up, but the bog-standard 68000-powered machines were long in the tooth by now.
Finally, the Hands On section has the usual array of topics of general and more specific interest.
Adverts time and we'll start with Compstand, a reseller with a goodly array of Amstrad, Olivetti and Tandon machines. Not entirely sure who would be buying mono display, single floppy '086's, but hey, £279 ex... For printer aficionados, it was fill your boots time with that selection as well.
Morgan were keeping the remainder world alive with their usual stock of bargains - that Zenith Minisport was a handy portable, although thankfully equipped with an external 3.5 inch floppy drive as good luck finding any 2 inch stock... anywhere.
Micro Surgeons backed up their 486 (see above) with what appears to be quite the bargain - a 286 with a 14 inch mono display, 40Mb hard drive and a meg of memory. Throw in DOS 5.0 and a dot matrix printer for a bundle price of £499 ex VAT. Considering a 9-pin printer would retail for a ton, and it appeared to be good value. Not sure about the brag that you could switch on and start typing your next book (no dedicated word processor, but MS-DOS Editor would have let you start with basic text files), and more expensive than an inkjet-equipped PCW 9512, but for a DOS option, not too bad-ish. Of course, spending more would buy you a some future proofing... as well as VGA graphics... Yeah, corners had been cut, and a perusal elsewhere would find you better value.
Crown Computer Products were going full on Epson with a pair of deals that would have appealed to me back then - the first being a 12MHz 286 laptop rocking 640kb of RAM and a 20Mb hard drive for just £699 ex, and a 10MHz 286 desktop for just £399 ex including 640kb of RAM, a 20Mb hard drive and a (possibly unbranded) VGA mono monitor.
The former stands out due to the software offer - two of an array of eleven packages for free. Personally, the MS-DOS v5.0 upgrade and Wordstar Express would have been my pick - and pity anyone attempting to get Windows 3, also on offer, running on that spec.
The latter ditches the software bundle, instead tempting buyers with a cheap XT portable. Twin floppy drives, 640kb of RAM and DOS 3.2 - yours normally for £399 ex VAT, but bundled with the EL2 desktop, just £299. To be fair, these were clearance bargains, for for basic use even in late 1991, they would have done the job. Just remember the comment I made about the Micro Surgeons bundle.
Along side the review, Psion also had a two page ad in the news section, and it's quite an effective one - uncluttered, informative, and playing up very much to the key selling points. And at just £200 inclusive of VAT, a bargain, surely?
MJN sold a goodly range of machines, as well as displaying a smidge more information for potential purchasers than some of its competitors. Explanation of the differences between the 286 and 386 is a nice touch, and the basic specs of that 16MHz 386SX - 2Mb of RAM, 43Mb hard drive, both 3.5" and 5.25" floppies and a 1Mb SVGA card (not a guarantee by any means for many a desktop), for £999 ex VAT is about right for the time. Of more local interest, the back page of their pull-out lists a number of companies they have supplied - and there, just past the half way mark, is the North of England Building Society. They would only be around for another three years before being acquired by the Northern Rock Building Society who then demutualised in 1997 and, well, yes... look what happened to them. Definitely should have stayed a building society...
Time Computer Systems booked several ads in this issue. This one is of particular note as it shows the Dolch portables previously mentioned in the news. Chunky beasts, but with such "portable" power, and no purchase prices listed, but at £104 per week excluding VAT for a three(!) year lease...
Diamond bring us to the end of this issue with their hawking of Philips' desktop range, and for reasonably priced clones they were... reasonably priced clones, despite a distinct lack of expansion opportunities. Those seeking fun would benefit from the inclusion of Indiana Jones! Both 286 and 386 machines bundled the Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade adventure game, alongside World Class Leader Board Pro Golf Simulator (and breathe!), and if your needs were suited to DOS, much like previously mentioned ads, they were ok. But merely ok. The future was Windows, the 386/486, and Super VGA graphics, and the likes of MJN offered better value than the likes of Philips.
Anyway, that's it for 1991. For the next Magazines of Yesteryear, I'm feeling a yearning for the valleys, for there be Dragons in them there hills.
