DEC seems to have learned the bitter lesson of its first foray into the personal computer market – it unveiled three machines in May 1982 in what was proclaimed at the time as a mission to bury Apple, and the specs and the pricing on the three looked superb – except that DEC wasn’t able to ship most of the things for nine months to a year, by which time the profile of the market had changed completely, and DEC had missed the bus: it is trying again in the personal computer market next Tuesday, again with three lines – MS-DOS micros made for it by Tandy Corp, its own Personal VAX, and the Unix workstation based on the MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC – but this time, the company is indicating that not only will pricing be keen, but the machines will be out there in volume within weeks of the announcement.
