Having spent more than $30m advertising the PS/1 brand and name since 1990 according to Competitive Media, IBM Corp plans to spend another not inconsiderable fortune trying to persuade people to forget all about PS/1s and think Aptiva. Yes, that’s right, Aptiva: that is the name Computer Retail News hears IBM has chosen for the successors to the PS/1s, seven models with multimedia features and a wake-up command that will download information at a pre-set time. The Wall Street Journal hears that they will also have built-in speech recognition so that speech-enabled applications, some of which will be bundled, can be operated by simple spoken commands. Intuit Inc’s Quicken personal-finance package will be speech-enabled, and all Aptivas also will feature a telephone-answering system, the paper hears. Starting at just over $1,000 with colour monitor, the machines will all include CD-ROM drive and stereophonic sound and expected to launch in two weeks – ahead of replacements for ValuePoint and PS/2 lines in October – as the IBM PC.
