As per the cover, we've got a boat load of product recommendations, a review of Wordstar for Windows, and a look at the Silicon Graphics Iris Indigo, but let's begin with the news.
Amstrad were updating their venerable PCW range with the new 9256 and 9512 models, taking the opportunity to ditch the obsolescent 3" floppy drive with the now de rigueur 3.5" format. It would leave 1.5 million existing users in the lurch if they upgraded their older kit, but the company were seemingly happy to wash their hands of that particular problem and leave it to third party suppliers. Whether existing users would upgrade was another question, and one I'll come back to later. There was also more info on Amstrad's new ANB-386SX laptop, as well as the Series 5 desktops. Ranging from a £399 8MHz 8086 with 640Kb of RAM and no hard drive, to a 286 running at 16MHz with 1Mb of RAM, a 40Mb hard drive and VGA colour for £999, they were much of a muchness, although the 5286 would gain an extra SKU prior to Christmas with the Family Pack.
Toshiba's new T2200SX was the first of their offerings to use a new slim form-factor floppy drive from Citizen, and the first to permit the use of Jeida cards for additional RAM or storage. Having already appeared in handheld PC's, these were the coming thing for laptops, although at £125 for 128Kb capacity, they make today's storage prices look anaemic. There again, the T2200SX was listed at £3,795, so it wasn't just a storage thing. Still, that money for a 20MHz 386SX and a 60Mb hard drive... ok-ish for the time.
Tandon were the other big hardware news story, with a new range of machines taking over their existing offerings, weeks after lowering the prices on the older kit. As Dame Angela Lansbury sang that year, a tale as old as time.
The In Brief section of shorter reviews handed out a 3/5 for Publisher for Windows (when Desktop Publishing was a thing), whilst Microsoft Works for Windows achieved a 5/5, which wasn't at all surprising given what it offered for the very reasonable (contemporary) sum of £145.
The Silicon Graphics Iris Indigo received a page and a half review, with a final score of 3/5. A powerhouse for the time, it offered a 33MHz R3000A RISC chip, R3010A floating point unit, 8Mb of RAM (expandable to 96Mb), and a SCSI port for additional connectivity. Storage consisted of a 3.5" floppy, hard drives of 236 or 432Mb capacity, and space for a 1.3Gb DAT drive. When attached to a 17" monitor displaying a resolution of 1,024x768, it sure looked the dog's danglies, and on-paper was roughly twice as fast as a comparable 486. Whether that meant it was good value for money was up to you. What Micro considered it passable. Diskless with 8Mb of RAM would set you back £6,709. Add a 236Mb hard drive and you would pay £8,490. Take the spec to 24Mb of RAM and that 436Mb hard drive, and you were nearing £12,000! Wowzers!
The cover story is next, and What Micro's annual survey shone a light on what their respondents were using. As you can see from the graphics, desktops ruled the hardware world. As for processors, there was still a decent chunk of 8086 users out there, but by now the 286 was being squeezed out by the more capable 386SX, whilst it's daddy, the 386DX, remained the champion of the mainstream power users. The 486 was truly a top end chip in 1991, as its relatively small market share proves that, but there's a fair sized wedge of non-Intel owners. This would have included the obvious 68000-based hardware from Apple, Commodore and Atari, as well as NEC's V20 (8088 pin compatible) and V30 (8086 pin compatible) chips. Going further out on a limb, I'd also suggest Z80's, as not all PCW's went into a home.
For the main hardware and software categories, there's a "best seller" as provided by the survey data, versus a "What Micro Best Buy" that the magazine offered as an alternative, with a couple of honourable mentions in box outs for variety. Scores out of five were given for Performance, Build Quality, Extra features, and Value for Money, and prices were ex VAT as this was a serious business publication. Data was sourced via monthly, quarterly and annual figures from Romtec, with additional data from Inteco and Dataquest - two are vaguely familiar, but we're talking half a lifetime ago.
First up were 286 Desktops, and really, by late '91, a 286 was the absolute very least any buyer, home or professional, should have been considering. Just about able to handle Windows 3 (and much more able with more than 1Mb of RAM), it would be a decent workhorse for those wanting to spend under a grand. Olivetti had the Best Seller in their PCS286 but only managed a middling 3, 4, 2, 3. The key failing here was the price. As the article notes, £1,099 would get you a 386SX from some vendors. Viglen were the Best Buy with an £899 offering that included DOS, Windows 3 and associated manuals. The only improvement would be to the RAM, but adding an extra 4Mb would cost you £356. IBM and Tandon were the alternates, but to be honest, the Viglen was the one to beat here, and it deserved its 4, 4, 5, 5.
IBM were given a full bite of the apple in the 386SX Desktop fight, but it's not a great result. A score of 2, 5, 2, 1 is a much deserved verdict considering the asking price of £3,319! And for a 16MHz processor with only 2Mb of RAM as well! Remember what was said above about the price of 386SX's? Yeah, that. All day! However, if you were of the "nobody was ever fired for buying an IBM" crowd, maybe you would splash the cash on this PS/2 Model 55 MCA doofer. Not that the Dell competitor was hugely better. Oh, value wise, it's a knockout - a 20MHz processor for a more palatable £2,298 and that included 4Mb of RAM (although wait until we get to the Elonex 386DX!). the final 5, 4, 4, 3 rating was down to that still rather high price. There again, Dell were aiming at IBM and Compaq, and that pricing was just fine for this battle. The latter received a box out, alongside ICL's SX, but it's time to move on.
Speaking of Compaq, they were the Best Seller in the 386DX category, up against 80's and 90's UK favourite, Elonex. And this one wasn't even close. Compaq's 20MHz machine gave you 4Mb of RAM, a 110Mb hard drive and DOS (no windows) for £3,895, earning it an initially promising but ultimately doomed 4, 5, 2, 1. There's some consolation from the boxout, where the 386/25e model was matched with IBM's Model 70-M61, but it's Elonex who walked away with the DX title. The scores of 5, 3, 4, 5 do not lie, and nor did the price. £1,395 for a 33MHz chip was very good. Corners were cut (2Mb of RAM and only a 40MB hard drive), but there's a ton of room for costing in upgrades to surpass the Compaq's spec for a lot less wonga.
We end the desktop pairings with an ICL Best Seller and an AST Best Buy. And once again, the best seller struggled against the mag's choice. The former landed with a cost of £5,270(!) for a machine that gave you a 25MHz processor, 4Mb of RAM and a 100Mb hard drive. Despite the lack of VRAM for the VGA chipset, the final verdict of 4, 4, 1, 1 centred on the absolutely monstrous asking price. And as for memory upgrades, jumping to 8Mb would have set you back £795! AST's Bravo 486/25 dropped the hard drive to 85Mb, the RAM to 2Mb, and suffered from a questionable display, but your credit card would only get hit for £3,440, so hey, 4, 3, 3, 4 was more than enough here. Tandon and Compaq round off the box outs.
Here we must pause, gentle reader, and discuss terminology. Laptops back then were something you could, but maybe not should, use on your lap - they were big, heavy, but also capable. Notebooks were lighter, as their nomenclature hints at, with true(!) portability central to their use. Mains portables were a unique sub-class all of their own and thank any deity you please that battery technology (as well as other areas) has advanced massively since the early 90's! The scoring has changed here too, with points awarded for Performance, Screen, Keyboard, Build Quality, Extra features, and Value for Money.
Laptops pitted Toshiba's 3100SX against Amstrad's ALT-386SX, and despite a track record going back several years, the Tosh (3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2) fell to Alan's lappy (3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 5). Both featured a 16MHz chip, but where as the 3100SX rocked a gas plasma display and two (count 'em) battery compartments, it cost £3,095 when packing an 80Mb hard drive. The Amstrad, however, featured a more common LCD display for a highly reasonable £1,999 with 80Mb of storage, and only £1,699 with 40Mb. Coming in at around 15lbs in weight, their batteries were only good enough for two hours (the Amstrad), and two and a half hours (the Tosh, but you had two with that one so party times ahead with the Toshiba!) - but those durations were about average for the period. The key point here was value, and Amstrad had a winner there. Two Compaq's went head to head for the honourable mentions, but one was a three year old 286, and the other a hugely expensive 386.
286 notebooks saw Toshiba (3, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3), against Dell (3, 2, 4, 4, 4, 4), with the former's 1200XE priced at £1,795 compared to the 212n's £1,399, and to be honest, no matter the aesthetic appeal of a traditional Toshiba notebook, the Dell was the much better, and cheaper, option. Another defeat for the Japanese giant. Compaq's elderly LTE 286 and Commodore's C286LT (a re-branded machine also offered by Sanyo) did not inspire much thought beyond the Dell.
The Compaq LTE 386s/20 (5, 4, 2, 5, 3, 3) came in at £3,295 in the 386SX notebook category, whereas Tandon's NB/386SX (5, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5) would have set you back £2,699. The latter featured more storage (40Mb vs 30Mb), and as these were genuinely more portable than the laptop offerings above, could justify their prices, especially compared to the Amstrad. There's a hell of a difference between that laptop and the 6.6lb Tandon notebook. Whilst the Compaq was good, it just wasn't £600 better than the Tandon. Toshiba's expensive T2000SX, and Arche's Messenger 386SX both only packed 16MHz processors (the two main choices run at 20MHz), and as such provided scant alternative comfort.
The last hardware category was an automatic win for Toshiba and their 3200SX (4, 5, 4, 4, 4) as it was one of the few mains-only portables still available for sale, and the only one covered by the magazine. There was, of course, a reason for this: colour. Yep, this Tosh could be had with a mono screen for "just" £2,850, but to experience the true glory of 256-colour VGA, that price soared to £6,695. Dealer prices were a good deal cheaper at around £4,129 ex VAT, but you were paying for the screen - and TFT's were niche at this point in time. The added benefit of a battery-less device was the ability to make use of the sheer size of the portable and add expansion slots - one full length 16-bit and one half-length 8 bit in this case.
The software categories were awash with long lost names, which make this quite the tour down memory lane for those of us old enough to remember such halcyon days. The scoring categories varied per software area, as did the actual ranking - there's still a Best Seller award, but the second choice was now an "Alternative" award. Other options were covered as and where applicable.
That age old favourite, word processing, was suitably first and foremost, and wouldn't you know it, Wordperfect 5.1 took the top place. I recall a brief period of usage at college, but the newer machines were equipped with Word by 1995. Wordstar 6.0 handled as a good back up (both would set you back about £400), but the big surprise (or maybe it shouldn't be), was that Word for Windows was only good enough for a box out place. There again, it was still early days for Windows 3, and DOS users had the benefit of the much more powerful established packages. What Micro did seem surprised by the prevalence of IBM's Displaywrite 4, but what's the world without a little corporate craziness? Well, actually...
Pagemaker version 4.0 was the market choice for Desktop Publishing fiends, although Timeworks Publisher PC would have been a great alternative, especially as it cost less than a fifth of the big name package.
Spreadsheet fiends would have been in rapture with the classic offerings from Lotus - Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3.1 and Release 2.2 were clearly the favourites. Why the two versions? Well, 2.2 was for what the magazine classed as "low power" users (think 640Kb of RAM), whilst 3.1 was for the posh peeps and their 1Mb plus machines. Either way, 1-2-3 was the one to beat, yet the alternative, Supercalc version 5, actually received a higher score. Again, the reason is not surprising - it may have lacked a few features compared to Lotus, it only cost £79 as opposed to £395/£475 respectively. Excel version 3 flew the flag for Windows, but as noted, it's only competition back then was Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows. The times they were a-changing.
In a way, kind of a busman's holiday, databases were led by the unimaginative but hugely selling dBase IV v1.1. However, that low score of 2 was down to an reliance on its historical significance, and the alternative (although now labelled a best buy), Superbase, was a tad cheaper but much better value for money.
The final software category was that of integrated packages, and who would have guessed it, it was Microsoft Works. Accounting for nearly a quarter of all integrated package sales, it was a no-brainer, and for just £145, there was no question that for home and small business users, it did what it needed to do. The Windows version would become synonymous with PC bundles as Windows made greater in-roads in to the home user market.
Printers were the last group to be rated, and whether it was non-Postscript lasers (The Hewlett-Packard Laserjet III and Brother HL-8V were both priced at £1,749), or Postscript lasers (Apple's Laserwriter IINT and IINTX - £3,595 and £4,595 - against Qume's Crystalprint Publisher II and Publisher Express - £3,750), these were very mush professional level devices.
Dot-matrix printers were still an option for those who required basic services and a side helping of tinnitus. Espon's LX-400 (£169) and Brother's M-1309 (£239) were fine 9-pin choices, although the Epson FX-1050 held 8% of the market (at £599 too!), and Star's venerable and seemingly herpes-like LC-10 held 7.3% market share. I mean, that printer was always front and centre in the Amiga mags I read at the time, and it could be found for far less than its RRP of £199. Hi-Voltage further on in this issue had it for £104 (they were also the reseller chucking out Toshiba 3200SX's with a third off.
If 9 pins could be good, then 24 could (and I only say could be better), for which Epson's LQ-400 (£255) and Citizen's Swift 24 (£365) did the job. Once again, Epson and Star battle in the box out - the LQ-550 held an 8% share (sounds eerily familiar), and the LC24-10 a 7.3%... hold on, what??? Oh well, that's what the data said, apparently. As with the 9-pinners, that Star could be found below RRP: £150 from Hi Voltage for example.
The most popular inkjet was, and this is geuniely not hard to believe at all, the Canon BJ-10e. Truly a classic printer of it's type and time, it's 30.3% share was well earned. It wasn't the best desktop inkjet - it was more for portable consideration, but it straddled the different needs of users well. Another familiar name, the Hewlett-Packard HP500, was a gnat's todger (I've been listening to "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" recently) behind at 27%. Apple also showed up, and gave an idea of how popular the Mac was in professional circles as it's Stylewriter hit 12%. The best buy was yet another Canon, the BJ-300, and in truth, none of these offerings would have been a bad choice.
We have arrived back at full reviews now, and a proper gander at Digital Research's DR-Dos 6. The review loved it, and considered it far better than Microsoft's MS-DOS 5. Which was lovely. It truly was. It meant fuck all, because Redmond already had the DOS market sown up, and it was not about to let go if it. There again, history is awash with products that were genuinely better than anything from the then House of Gates, but their time was not to be. That wouldn't, didn't, and still does not stop people from avoiding Microsoft's wares, and as regular readers know, I dabble in Linux, use a Mac as a daily driver, and will always have a special place for RISC OS, foibles and all. And even the Mac is slowly slipping out of favour...
Wordstar for Windows managed a 4 out of five for blurring the lines between a word processor and DTP, and as above, bless 'em for doing it. However, Word was already planted firmly in the Windows market and the developer would be acquired a couple of years later. Interestingly, and this is still on my radar to try out, the DOS version was re-released for free back in 2024 as detailed by this article by Liam Proven on The Register, and the download can be found here.
The Radius Full Page Pivot offered a feature that can be easily found on many monitors today - the option for landscape or portrait view. A 15-inch display, user had the ability to reach 1,024x768 in 256 colours courtesy of a dedicated interface card. Very well specified, the only fly in the ointment was the price: £1,049 for the monitor itself, £329 for the controller. That exceeded the dealer prices for NEC 20" displays (without the tilt option, obviously), but still, there would have to have been a highly specific use case for justifying the spend. And no, that doesn't mean topics for retro-themed YouTubers to make videos about in the 2020's!
A guide to maths co-processors for 286 and 386 machines delivered a verdict the Intel's chips were not worth the ask, and that the Cyrix and IIT products offered better value for money. Whether you actually needed a co-pro was another question. Number crunching, yes, but for the average user, not really.
Accounting and word processing are given a couple of masterclass articles, before the question of renting or leasing is raised for businesses. The cost varied massively, and considering how long you might need such kit for, I'm struggling to see the point outside of avoiding a huge capital outlay. However, since the current AI drive is making even basic kit a bit of an extravagance, maybe such financial means will return. Not exactly progress, is it?
The monthly buyer's guide takes in vast array of desktops (11.5 pages), portables (4 pages), printers (6 pages), and monitors/display controllers (2 pages), before we get the the final page opinion comment, and the views of Karl Dallas on the new version of Windows: 3.1 - and times have not changed, given that the author bewails Microsoft's broken promises on v3.0, the supposed improvements of 3.1, and the fact that no matter how little you paid for the upgrade of the .1 version, it was still too much.
Adverts, and we begin with a Commodore commercial and their "Quality PC Business Systems" range. They were still hawking a monitor-less XT-class in the PC20 for £499 ex VAT, topped out at a 386SX-20 for £1,049. You get DOS 4.01, but no Windows on the machines capable of running it.
Amstrad's most recent desktop, the 4386 received a full page for what was, in essence, an executive paperweight. It wasn't a bad bundle per se: 20MHz SX, 4Mb RAM, 80Mb hard drive, DOS and Windows, yours for £1,499 ex VAT with a mono monitor, £1,699 ex VAT for the 10" Sony Trinitron display. It was just expensive for the spec. You can understand Amstrad aiming for more lucrative areas outside of their traditional markets, but the 4386's RRP was not price competitive compared to other, up and coming names such as...
Elonex, and their PC-320X. Ok, only 1Mb of RAM, but you got a 100Mb hard drive, greater expansion, bigger 14" monitor, as well as DOS and Windows for £1,125 ex VAT. Even factoring in a £50 per megabyte upgrade cost, still cheaper than Amstrad's RRP.
Fortunately for them, that RRP was at best advisory, and Hi-Voltage would send you away with a 4386 for £1,285 ex VAT. That's much better, although here I'll hope you note the prices of the 3000-series and the PCW's...
Commodore's second ad was for their higher end stuff, and once again, they seemed to have been living off their name, as those prices, whilst not terrible compared to younger firms like Dell and Compaq, were not great value either, and still with no monitors as standard. Windows makes an appearance though, so... yay???
A Silica ad, because you know, tradition, custom, ancient by-law and all that. Also, note that although the ST-FM was always a fine home computer, by late 1991, it was very much past its best.
From a consumer perspective, 1991 was the year the 286 finally reliably dropped into three figure territory when you included VAT. Yet when Amstrad's 5286 Family Pack arrived (at £999 ex VAT, although that RRP very quickly dropped), it was criticised for being over-priced at a time when canny shoppers could get a 386 for the same money, and in that sense, the 286 was a dead-chip walking. Windows 3 (and 3.1) were much happier on a 2-4Mb 386, and it wouldn't be too long before 16 and 20MHz SX-equipped kit was similarly down below a grand. That was (and is) very real spending money, but as the ST and Amiga aged out, and hard drive-toting 386's with SVGA displays were showing computer gamers exactly what the PC had developed into, those home users with an eye on the future and desiring capable hardware knew where to look.
As that was happening, the lower end non-x86 hardware was being priced out of the market. Compare the PCW to even the base models of the 3000-series. A 3086 with 30Mb hard drive and a mono monitor was just under a ton more expensive than a top of the range PCW - and sure, the printer was extra with the PC, but you would have had a much more capable system with regards to software choice with the 3086, and when 286 prices came down even further in 1992, that signalled the definite end of specialised offerings like the PCW. Even taking into account the absolute corporate bin fires of the popular 16-bit formats, the age of ubiquity for the PC had dawned, and although it would take a couple of years to become truly apparent, the seeds of its dominance had been well and truly sown.
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