It’s not enough these days simply to put a typewriter keyboard and direct drive mechanism onto a daisywheel printer and say you’ve got an electronic typewriter – you have to invest the thing with a screen and word processing software as well. Latest to pull the trick is the Lanier Business Systems division of Harris Corp in Atlanta, Georgia. The Lanier ViewWriter display typewriter integrates word processing features with traditional typewriter functions – at a cost comparable with conventional electronic typewriters. Users may opt for typewriter or word processing mode at any time in the production of a document; as a word processor, ViewWriter delivers is designed to provide the functions that facilitate production of longer documents insert, delete, reformat, document repaginate, center, cut and paste are among a total of 26 word processing functions. The ViewWriter also features a high resolution, 16-line by 80-character amber display, traditional typewriter keyboard and a 17chps daisywheel printer. It comes standard with 24Kb of resident memory, which can be expanded to 200Kb, and other options include Lanier’s exclusive Memory Card – a 32Kb plug-in storage card that can accomodate 15 additional typed pages. Available immediately in the US, the Lanier ViewWriter costs $2,000.
