Amstrad Plc introduced an upmarket IBM Personalike with an additional 128Kb of memory and an Extended Graphics Adaptor for the US market at the Comdex/Spring show in Atlanta this week. The new PC1640 ranges in price from $900 with one floppy to 2,000 fully configured with hard disk. The machine is set for Europe early next year – and Microsoft is thought to be implementing Windows for it, but Amstrad is promising other developments for the UK market before then – the company is believed to have stopped manufacture of the existing PC1512 in April to gear up for new models. Stocks are believed to be substantial in the UK, particularly of twin floppy and 10Mb hard disk models, but despite overheated talk of very buoyant markets, all the signs are that the entire UK Personalike market is sliding into the usual summer doldrums, exacerbated by uncertainty over IBM’s Personal System/2.
