As forecast, Nippon Steel Computer Plc has duly launched two notebook computers for the European market, having already established a US manufacturing and marketing operation, Librex Computer Systems Inc, last August (CI No 1,497). The Librex 80286 and 80386SX were designed by the Electric & Information Systems Division of Nippon Steel, and future products will also come from Japan since a European production facility is unlikely. The Librex 286 and 386 weigh 6.3 lbs and are said to offer desktop computing in a portable format, although both have a battery-life of only two hours. The 286 has a 1.44Mb disk drive, a 20Mb or 40Mb hard drive, 1Mb of memory and it runs at 12.5MHz with zero wait state. The 386SX Notebook has a 1.44Mb disk drive, a 40Mb or 60Mb hard disk drive, runs at 20MHz and is configured with 4Mb random access memory. Both units have a 10 diagonal VGA display and four input-output ports – two serial, one parallel and an external VGA video. The Langley, Berkshire-based company employs 35 staff, including Andrew Carver, formerly with Compaq and now vice-president of European sales and marketing. He says that Nippon Steel Computer will focus exclusively on notebook computers, and all sales are to be through Librex Qualified dealers, still to be identified. The company will have a Customer Development Programme dedicated to corporate customers, but Nippon stresses that these companies will decide with which dealers they wish to conduct business. Subsidiaries are planned for France and Germany, and Nippon intends to establish relationships with European distributors. Nippon Steel Computer boasts that it is free from the expense constraints and low morale affecting some competitors, but has not revealed Librex prices as yet, since it believes that these same competitors are about to announce price changes. The Librex was announced in the US last year $4,500 (CI No 1,509).
