IBM makes move in desk-top publishing’

Press, 6 January 1987, Page 22

IBM makes move in desk-top publishing’

By

GARETH POWELL

IN DESK-TOP publishing the question has always been, what will IBM do? Now we have the answer.

It is going to concentrate on the top end of the market and, at least for the time being, ignore the huddled masses.

Its policy is based around the IBM RT. This Unix-based graphics work station was initially lacking some desirable features such as proper networking and full-floating-point performance.

But this machine was

from IBM and pointed the way along a road the company would probably travel.

Industry analysts described it as a “launching platform for follow-on IBM products and features enhancements that could seriously affect the technical work station competition.”

The earlier limitations of the RT have now been corrected, especially with a token-ring adaptor for a local area network. There is also a doubling of the internal memory to almost two megabytes, an increase in disc capacity to 70 megabytes, a

four-megabyte memoryexpansion .card, ! an advanced floating-point-accelerator card, which gives a three-times increase in speed, and a System/370 link-up card so that the RT can be tied in with a mainframe.

There are also about 130 software packages available (up from 18 when it was launched, and many more are in the pipeline).

This desirable computer/graphics work: station is now called the IBM RT PC6151 Model 15, and the current price is, understandably, not cheap — SUSIS,OOO.

Now the machine is being offered in the United States packaged with Workstation Publishing Software from Interleaf which it has renamed RT Publishing Software, with the software priced at a gulpinducing SUSI2.OOO.

At the moment,’ this package drives only the IBM 212 laser printer, but it is reported it will soon also drive other high-end laser printers.

Other news on the desktop publishing front • Xerox will definitely launch its desk-top publishing program Ventura in January. The price in

Australia will be around sAustlBoo, which makes it $6OO more expensive then the opposition Harvard Publisher, which is being distributed at roughly the same time by Imagineering.

• The first colour laser printer has been released by Colorocs of Georgia in the United States but is being released under the QMS label.

Still more on the colour-printer front Dataproducts has released a colour printer for less than SAustsooo. .It uses ink-melt pellets to provide a resolution which, it is claimed, is equal to a 300-dots-an-

inch laser printer. This ink technology resembles hot-melt glue. In this printer, a 32-nozzle head hhootsthe melted ink into dots, which plasticise on touching the paper. And, in Japan, Mitsubishi is distributing a new colour device from Shinko Electronic which is a colour-thermal transfer printer giving 200 dots an inch- and costing around sAustls,ooo. • Kurzweil in the United States has launched a scanner which will, it is claimed, recognise any type font ranging from 6 to 24 points as well as all typewriting. It will then read these docu-

ments into a database through a new program called File Driver which reformats the text to suit the database.

• Hewlett Packard, while confirming its arrangement with Microsoft and Aldus, seems to be having trouble announcing a firm delivery date for its new and essential DDL board. In the United States, it is calling it the HP Laser-Jet Publisher Kit. This will not be available in Australia until well into the first quarter of 1987, immediately after the American launch. Most industry analysts agree that March seems a likely date.