As part of its European strategy, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA announced a plethora of hardware in a product annoucement back in June. Of the 62 products it planned to ship in the third and fourth quarters of this year, Olivetti’s Echos notebook is definitely the design belle of the pack. The notebooks come in a terracota case with a rubber palm rest and a rubber flap covering the ports and has been created with comfort and style in mind, so says Olivetti designer Michele Di Lucchi, adding, too many notebooks are powerful but uncomfortable to use or carry, and many are built from material which is brittle and flimsy with jagged corners – totally inappropriate for a product that is meant to be mobile. Olivetti wanted the Echos to look good, and reflect the individual style of the user. Ol-ivetti see the product’s success lying in the fact that it is easy to carry and people will buy it because it looks good. But never mind style, what about the functionality? Touted as a desktop replacement, the Echos range goes from the basic Echos 42 with 4Mb RAM and 120Mb of disk, using a 80486SX processor, to the Echos 44, a full colour model with 240Mb of disk using a 80486DX/2 processor. All notebooks have standard two Type II or one Type III PCMCIA slots with VESA local bus video and are preloaded with MS-DOS 6.2, Windows 3.1 and Lotus Organiser. The notebooks are competitively priced ranging from the Echos 42 at UKP1,270 to the Echos 44 at UKP2,100 and they are shipping this month.
