IBM Corp is expected today to take the PS/1 home and very small business computer up into the 80386SX world with the launch of three models, two of which will be in the shops in time for the Christmas rush, while the third will be part of the company’s blitz to popularise OS/2 2.0. The New York Times suggests that the three new models will be a no-slots model with the current software bundle of Microsoft Corp’s Works, plus – in the US access software for the Prodigy Systems Corp viewdata service. The second will do Microsoft more favours by including Windows and Works for Windows with Prodigy. Each will have 2Mb and a 40Mb disk. The third model, which will not arrive until next year, will have OS/2 2.0 bundled. The paper does not expect the new PS/2 models that will use IBM’s own in-house fabricated variants of the 80386SX chip with on-board cache – these are said to run almost twice as fast in some applications as machines using Intel’s standard cacheless version, until later this month.
