[net.micro.att] AT&T PC Comments Heard

dwight@timeinc.UUCP (Dwight Ernest) (07/11/85)

	At an executive seminar sponsored by AT&T that I attended
yesterday (called "Interact '85") in New York City, which was
very well-attended by AT&T brass, including the COO and CEO of
ATT and ATTIS, a question from the audience (over >2000 people)
concerning the future of AT&T PC offerings was asked. I can't
remember exactly what the question was, but, in a manner similar
to Presidential press conferences, the question was more or less
ignored, and the answer was worth passing along, even if I can't
remember it verbatim.
	The AT&T folks said that the PC6300 would "continue to
be a viable product offering" and that AT&T "needs to continue
to offer a PC/DOS compatible machine" for strategic marketing
reasons. They said that the 6300 would "not be replaced in the
near term by the Unix PC family of products."
	Interesting that they should refer to the Unix PC as
a "family of products," no?
	They went on to say, quite clearly, that AT&T would indeed
offer a PC/DOS coprocessor capability for the Unix PC "in the near
future" and that they felt they had to offer this capability in
order to position the machine more viably in the marketplace.
	Personally, I think the Unix PC is one of the best things
I've seen for truly functional executive workstations since
sliced bread. The 8086 or 8088 coprocessing capability can only
improve an already fine product, in my opinion.
	They also hinted that the coprocessing capability would
be economically retrofittable to existing Unix PCs in the field.
-- 
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		--Dwight Ernest	KA2CNN	\ Usenet:...vax135!timeinc!dwight
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