Amstrad Plc yesterday threw down the gauntlet in the notebook computer market with the ANB-386SX, a 20MHz 80386SX-based machine costing UKP2,000. The company also launched a colour laptop and a compact desktop using the same chip. The Amstrad Notebook measures 11 by 8.5 by 2 thick, weighs 7 lbs and includes backlit VGA liquid crystal display with 640 by 480 resolution and 64 shades of grey, with a 7 by 5.2 viewing area. The full-size 82-key board has embedded numeric keypad. It comes with 1Mb, and custom 1Mb and 4Mb plug-in cards are available for a maximum 5Mb. It has 40Mb disk and the battery runs for three hours between charges; there is also a universal mains power supply which charges the batteries at full rate while the machine is being used off the mains. It takes external PS/2-type keyboard and mouse, and VGA monitor. A custom modem is planned. The desktop PC4386SX measures 9.8 by 10.4 by 2.7 and costs UKP1,500 with mono screen, UKP1,700 with Sony Trinitron colour. It has 4Mb expandable to 16Mb, 64Kb cache, 1.44Mb floppy, 80Mb Winchester and two 16-bit slots. Bundled software includes MS-DOS 3.3, Windows 3, and Amstrad Manager icon driven suite of word processor, card file database, diary and custom version of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The ACL-386SX is a colour version of the ALT laptop using thin-film transistor display, has 1Mb and 60Mb hard disk and MS-DOS 5; it costs UKP4,000 – those screens do not come cheap. The notebook and desktop will be available in early summer, the colour laptop not until the fourth quarter.
