Having bought a licence to Whitesmiths’ Idris Unixalike last year, Atari Corp, Sunnyvale, California, is tipped to introduce a line of 68030-based Unix workstations at the Hanover Fair next month – and the expectation is that the company will offer the machines at dramatically low prices. Idris may also be offered on the 68010-based ST models with 2Mb and 4Mb memory. Also in the Atari plan is its complete desk-top publishing system at under $5,000 – getting close to the price of a good laser printer alone. The system, extensively previewed last year, will include the Mega computer, the SLM804 laser printer, and Atari Deskset desktop publishing software. The software is claimed to put true WYSIWYG on the screen, and page formatting will be handled inside the computer rather than on the printer, 1Mb of memory being dedicated to laser printer commands. Atari is also looking to bring some manufacturing, presently done in Taiwan, back on-shore now that currency changes have altered a lot of the economics. According to Newsbytes, one of the two new plants will be in Silicon Valley, the other either Texas or Nevada.
