Tandy Corp has merged the European operations of its two subsidiaries, personal computer maker Victor Technologies and portable computer manufacturer GRiD Systems. The new company will trade as Victor Technologies, but the name GRiD will be retained for the portable product range, which includes pen driven computers, handhelds, notebooks and laptops. The name Victor will be used for desktop systems and servers. The merger of Victor and GRiD in Europe will dampen but not kill recent speculation that Tandy is planning to sell GRiD. Separately, the new company announced a handheld computer which includes MS-DOS 3.22 in ROM. The announcement was attended by Microsoft Corp, which endorsed the new M88 as the world’s first fully MS-DOS compatible handheld computer. The starting end-user price for the M88, which can be configured with from 128Kb to 640Kb of main memory, is UKP1,000. Aimed at the specialist data collection market, the M88 is not intended to compete with laptop or pocket computers.
