Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA clearly doesn’t regard its new Microchannel Architecture personal computers as very important for either the UK or the US market – although the machines were launched on Tuesday, by close of play Friday we still hadn’t seen anything on them from the company, nor had any information appeared on any of the usual PR news distribution systems in the US: for the record, the company unveiled a desk-top 80386SX P500 machine – must be the first Microchannel 386SX box out – with 1Mb to 4Mb, five slots, 1.44Mb 3.5 floppy and 40Mb and 80Mb hard disk options, which is claimed to outperform the PS/2 50Z two fold running dBase III; and the 25MHz 80386-based P800 – out in June – which seems to be pitched at the same user IBM wants for the high-end PS/2s because it features Token Ring adaptor, co-ax 3270 interface, SNA/bisync 3270 emulation and IBM 5250 emulation adaptor for attaching to AS/400s, 36s and 38s, as well as having 4Mb to 8Mb memory, eight slots, the floppy, and 135Mb and 300Mb Winchesters, and is claimed to be 50% faster than the PS/2-80 with 111Mb disk running dBase III – but then IBM isn’t using a fast 80386; both machines are offered with MS-DOS, MS-OS/2, Unix System V/386, Windows 386, X Window System and Xenix; no indication of prices on either box.
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