brucec@orca.UUCP (Bruce Cohen) (08/17/83)
I did not receive many replies to my request for info on the Peanut. Here are all the messages I got, edited as necessary to conserve confidentiality (I gather that several of these people are close to the source, and don't wish to be identified as divulging information). Several people at my own site told me that the Wall Street Journal article referenced in the net article which sparked my request was actually remarkably content-free, in that they "leaked" their own guesses, and then reported IBM's refusal to comment. Bruce Cohen UUCP: ...!teklabs!tekecs!brucec CSNET: tekecs!brucec@tektronix ARPA: tekecs!brucec.tektronix@rand-relay ----------------------- Bruce I talked with --- -------- Tuesday and he said that he was sure the Peanut would be available next month. He has talked to some people at other software companies and is sure that some of them have them in their back rooms and are secretly doing software for IBM right now. Also I saw something that said it had been announced in the Wall Street Journal. ------------------ They (IBM) informed us that Peanut will be officially announced in September. However, due to production problems, it will not be available until January 1, 1984. Their reasoning here is that by announcing Peanut, they will give consumers who want to buy around Christmas time something to think about. They simply cannot produce the machine fast enough to get it out by Christmas in sufficient quantities. They figure that they will capture enough attention to keep some people from buying Atari's, Commodore's, etc at Christmas so that they will wait until January to buy the Peanut. They also said that it will be priced at $995, but they would not reveal what that would include. They stated that it would be MOSTLY PC-compatible.....no further details on this either. ------------------------------- I heard a rumor (from a company peddling systems based on IBM PC's) that I should look foward to an October announcement. -------------------------------