Christmas cheer —who will benefit most?

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 35

Christmas cheer —who will benefit most?

“Christmas is icoumin in, loude sing Goodam.” As the poet very nearly wrote, this is the time of the year when every computer manufacturer and importer hopes to get those sales which will make all the difference to the end-of-year profit figures.

Here is my view of the potential big winners in the Yuletide electronic scramble.

Amstrad is very definitely the dark horse. The local distributor will be selling machines which, although some way away from the state of the art, represent solid value for money with outfits that include everything the absolute beginner would need — all at rock bottom price. It may well be that by Christmas it will have on sale a computer set up as a word processor and it will be selling the whole box and dice for around $2500, including the printer. State of the art technology it ain’t — but that should not worry the market it is targeted at. Also set fair to pull in the bickies is the new JX lineup from IBM. This looks like becoming the machine for all seasons. I am merely guessing, but I am fairly sure IBM saw this machine mostly suited to the educational and home markets. The way that small businesses are regarding it as the ideal business machine has probably come to IBM as a happy surprise.

This is the first IBM computer that has been available at a price attractive to the home market. It is still not a machine that will be bought for ankle biters — unless they have very rich, over-indul-gent parents — but there is little doubt several college and university students can

expect to see it as a welcome bulge in their Christmas stockings.

At the lower end of the market, the situation is slightly more confused. Much depends on whether Commodore gets its new 128 to the market in sufficient quantities in time. If it does, it will have a machine guaranteed to set the tills ringing, simply because it provides more bangs to the buck than any comparable machine, and its price of around $lOOO is extremely attractive.

At the same time, its appearance will make Commodore lower the price of its 64, which will make the 64 a very competitive machine indeed. The one machine I do not see looming large at Christmas is the MSX range. According to reports from Britain, the threatened Japanese invasion of MSX machines has simply not got off the ground. The story is that the Japanese manufacturers are waiting for all the British manufacturers to drive each other into the ground before steaming in to dominate the marketplace. Unless I am

very much mistaken, the Japanese have, for once, got their sums completely wrong.

No-one, not even the Japanese,-would argue that MSX is anything but old hat. And although the Japanese have shown time and time again they are in business for the long haul, in this case, the technology is changing so rapidly that a computer can become out of date in months rather than years. MSX has hardly scratched the surface in New Zealand, nor do I think it will ever do so. Unless I have been misinformed, one computer goodie you will not be seeing this Christmas is a com-puter-operated robot pussy cat. This is on sale to nondiscriminating buyers in the United States and Britain for around SUSISO (SNZ263).

The cat is called the Petster, and is the creation of Nolan Bushnell, who was the driving force behind the original Atari. He seems a mite carried away by the electronic pet scenario for, in launching the uncute and uncuddlesome creations at the San Francisco International Personal Robotics Conference he said: “The main problem facing the personal robot is the disparity between public perception and technological capability. “The public has lower expectations of a robot cat than that of an android. It doesn’t ask ‘what can it do?’ They want to know if it is going to be a fun companion.”

His fun companion responds to clapping signals and can be programmed as to moods. What is truly frightening is the fact that its sound sensors are so accurate it can track its owner down nine times out of 10.