barry@metheus.UUCP (Barry Roitblat) (02/03/84)
With all the information floating around about the MAC, etc., I figured I'd
throw in what I know. I have a Lisa and have been very interested to figure
out what was happening so I called Apple in Cupertino and talked to their local
rep and the dealer I bought the Lisa from.
I have seen the Macintosh and it looks pretty impressive although I didn't
care for the small screen. They have had to make it pretty lean to fit in
64k of ROM but they seem to have done a good job and it is pretty quick.
Overall I have been pretty happy with my Lisa and I am amazed at all the
things they did right in its software. If the Mac is as good, it should
do quite well.
The major differences between the Mac and the Lisa is capacity. The Lisa 1
has a megabyte of memory and a 12 inch 364 x 720 screen. The Macintosh
has only 128k (supposedly expandable to 512k with 256k rams) and a 9 inch
3?? x 512 screen.
The Lisa (1) comes with 2 5.25 inch floppies with 871k each. The Mac has
a single 3.5 inch with 340k. The Lisa 2 uses the same single 3.5 inch drive.
The Lisa is running off a 5Mhz 68000 and the Mac runs at ~8Mhz (that's right,
faster). The Mac currently does not have much in the way of expansion
capability.
The printer available for either machine is a dot matrix printer with,
supposedly, 100 dots/inch.
The Macintosh sells for $2495. Add ~$600 for the printer, $99 for the carrying
case and $195 for the MacWrite and MacPaint software (these software packages
are available free during the introduction period of ~90 days). I have seen
MultiPlan already running on the Mac selling for about $200. My Apple
dealer also supplied me with a list of about 50 companies who have already
announced Macintosh software or hardware.
The Lisa I sells for $8495 (although it is discounted almost everywhere now
that the Lisa 2 and Macintosh are coming) and includes 1Meg of memory, 5 Meg
of hard disk (~190ms average access time!) 2 floppy drives, a printer, and
6 application packages LisaWrite, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaList, LisaCalc and
LisaProject.
The Lisa 2 sells for $3495 base. This includes 1 3.5 inch floppy, 1/2 Meg
of memory (half the Lisa 1) and no printer, software, or hard disk.
The Lisa 2/5 adds the 5 Meg hard disk and ups the price to $4495.
The Lisa 2/10 adds a 10 Meg internal hard disk (faster too) for a total
of $5495.
Upgrading the Lisa 2 to a full 1 megabyte of memory costs an additional $1495.
The software packages listed above sell separately for between ~$200 and ~$400.
For those of us lucky enough to already have a Lisa, Apple will "upgrade" the
Lisa 1 to a Lisa 2 by taking away the 2 5.25" floppies and replacing them
with a single 3.5". They will also give us release 2.0 of the Lisa software
which is claimed to be twice as fast. This upgrade is free. We can also add
the 10 Meg hard disk (also a 2X performance improvement) for $2495. Apple has
been getting some flack about this upgrade policy so it may change. If it
doesn't, you can start signing up at your dealer after March 1st.
Barry Roitblat
Metheus