jbtubman@water.UUCP (Jim Tubman [LPAIG]) (04/05/85)
This appeared in the Friday, April 5 edition of the Toronto Globe and Mail. It will be of interest to Canadians and Americans living near the Canadian border. All figures are in Canadian dollars ($1 CDN = $0.73 US, approx). Reprinted without permission. JACKINTOSH TO POP UP IN MID-MAY IN CANADA By Jonathan Chevreau The new general manager of recently formed Atari (Canada) Corp. of Toronto says its 520 ST, or "Jackintosh," personal computer will be available in Canada in mid-May, one month before it is on sale in the United States. The Jackintosh, a colour home computer similar to Apple's Macintosh, is the brainchild of Jack Tramiel, who recently acquired Atari Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., after being at the helm of Commodore Interational Ltd. of the Bahamas. Atari Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary, began operations in January under Ian Kennedy, director of sales and marketing and soon to be general manager. He and three other senior executives followed Mr. Tramiel from Commodore to Atari. In the days of the video game boom, Atari video games were distributed in Canada by Irwin Toy Ltd. of Toronto. Irwin still distributes the 2600 game machine, but the new line of personal computers is being handled by Atari Canada. It is currently operating out of downtown sales offices, but plans to move to a showcase and warehouse in the spring. Mr. Kennedy projected sales of $35-million for 1985. Atari Canada plans to spend, initially, about 10 to 12 per cent on advertising, with the figure declining to 7 per cent in later months. No Canadian R and D or manufacturing is expected in the short term. The machines use many North American-made components but are assembled in Taiwan. While the home computer market has been depressed of late, Mr. Kennedy expects next Christmas to be a lively contest between Atari and Commodore. As well as the Atari model, the market will see Commodore's new Amiga. The ST's name stands for Sixteen/Thirty-Two -- the number of bits that can be processed by its Macintosh-like processor. The ST resembles the Macintosh closely, employing icons or images, a mouse and pull-down menus. However, the Jackintosh, and presumably the competitive Amiga, will cost much less than the Macintosh, and will have a colour monitor. The Jackintosh will cost $1,300 in Canada for a configuration that includes the main processor unit with 500 [sic] kilobytes of memory, a monitor, 3.5 inch disc drive and mouse. Atari also plans to introduce a 15-megabyte hard disc drive that will cost less than $500, a printer for about $350, and an integrated software package that costs less than $100. The package has word processing, telecommunications, data base management, a spreadsheet and graphics.