bobs@ihu1e.UUCP (Bob Snead) (01/05/84)
I posted this article last week, but report indicate that it did not make it out into the net (or at least not to all machines). If you have already seen it, my sincere apologies! I took a trip to the area Sperry office yesterday to check out their PC. I thought I would let everyone know what I found out. To keep this short I'll only give info not given in the Wall Street Journal article or the one posted to the net. First of all, they have no intention of marketing this machine as anything but a business machine: they do not plan to let anybody like Computerland etc. sell it. However, I did tell them up front that I was not representing any company, but was interrested for purely personal use. They seemed more than eager to talk to me anyway, probably to polish their sales technique (they had only had the machine a few days). Appearance: The machine is nice looking. It really doesn't look much like an IBM. Its system unit is about the same dimensions as the IBM It is a cream color and on the right hand side where the right-most drive is on the IBM it has two half-height drives. The monitor (they call it the display) is the same color as the system unit and comes on a swivel stand. It has nice bright colors and a green-screen mode. Hardware: Everything the Wall Street Journal article and the article post to the net appeared to be true. I wasn't able to assess the faster speed, but the high-res graphics looked really nice! One of the three sales persons that waited on me told me firmly that this was exactly the same machine as the IBM, as it came from the same manufacture. This was difficult to swallow since it is obviously not the same physically (half-height drives, extra expansion slots etc.). The keyboard is a Keytronics keyboard that is a bit better than the IBM, but not perfect. The return key is better placed, but still too small and the keys generally feel mushy. The high-res graphics board takes up two expansion slots. Software: I didn't see much here. The machine comes with MS-DOS and G.W. Basic. They had a few graphics demo programs, Dbase II and Wordstar and not much else. The floppy systems come with MS-DOS 1.25 and the hard disk ones 2.0. I asked about software compatability and was told "100%". I asked if that included the ROM BIOS and they said "what?". Obviously the basic isn't compatible. Packaging: They only sell the machine in the models announced (you can't configure your own system by buying one without drives and then installing your own third party drives, for example). They have added two additional models, the 25 and the 45. These are actually slight downgrades of the 30 and 50 respectively, having IBM compatible color but lacking the high-res. This color controller takes only one slot. Nobody could tell me if it was possible to add the second board to this one to upgrade to high-res, or if you had to buy a whole new controller. Prices: Model Price 10 $2643 20 $3119 25 $3338 30 $3773 40 $5099 45 $5318 50 $5753 Bob Snead AT&T Bell Labs Naperville, Il. ..!ihnp4!ihu1e!bobs