Any lingering doubts about the viability of powerful 80486-based systems as desktop machines were effectively buried under an avalanche of new product releases at this week’s Which Computer? Show: computer manufacturers at least are confident that users will find a need for all those MIPS for power hungry applications such as computer-aided design, desktop publishing and complex spreadsheets. And many of the new launches featured the latest 33MHz version of the chip, unlikely to appear in any volumes for at least three months, according to common consensus (Peter Horne of Apricot Computers was even more cautious, not expecting general availability inside six months). 80486 machines were launched by AEG Olympia of Iver, Buckinghamshire, Archie Technology of Nottingham, Elonex Plc of North London, Jarogate Ltd of Surbiton in Surrey, and Tatung (UK) Ltd, Telford, Shropshire, to name a few. Others, such as Apricot, Altos, AST, Dell and HM Systems were showing products already announced. Most enthusiastic of all was Singapore-based Sino-Technic Pte Ltd, which was distributing literature boasting of 33MHz or 50MHz machines in its OEM Motherboard series – with only a tiny but confident asterix declaring availability in 1990. Spanish manufacturer APD Internacional SA, which manufactures its machines in Madrid and Barcelona and is currently setting up a network of European distributors, introduced its dual processor APD 400 80386 distributed processing machine alongside its Series 40xx 80486 machine – a move that contrasted rather strangely with Altos Computer’s decision to abandon its own dual processor 80386 model in favour of its faster and cheaper 25MHz 80486 Series 5000 model.
