pollack@uicsl.UUCP (06/14/83)
#N:uicsl:7000016:000:1790 uicsl!pollack Jun 13 09:51:00 1983 I was present at the press-conference unveiling of the new Coleco home computer and was quite amazed. They are offering a combination video game/word processing system for mass consumption in August. The system costs $600 (or $400 as an add-on for the Colecovision video game) and includes: A Z80 (unspecified cycle time) A TI sprite graphics chip 80K memory (I assume 64k for Z80, 16K for graphics) A Digital Tape Drive (~500k per "datapack") A 12cps Daisy-wheel Printer A full Ascii keyboard (sculptured tops & tactile feedback!) 2 Colecovision joysticks (including numeric keypads) The machine has a slot for videogame cartridges and runs all Colecovision compatible games. The software includes an operating system using C/PM I/O vectors, (which they believe will allow it access to a huge body of programs) and a Basic equivalent to Applesoft Basic, (which they hope will allow it access to the body of Apple edu-ware) a menu-driven word-processing system (which pretends, graphically, to be an electric typewriter) and an (unspecified) database system. They say that there will eventually be other things available, such as a Logo system and floppy-disk drives. They claim that the bit transfer rate and the storage capacity of their digital tape drive is comparable to a floppy disk, but hedged the question of seek time, which will obviously be notoriously bad. Question: How can they sell a system like this for less than the price of a daisy-wheel printer? Answer: Either the system is pure junk and will have lots of mechanical failures after the 90 day warranty period is over, or else the economies of scale for consumer electronics are beyond what is ordinarily possible in the microcomputer marketplace. ---------------------- Jordan Pollack University of Illinois
cfh@cca.UUCP (06/15/83)
There have been several articles in the Wall Street Journal recently
about the new Coleco microcomputer. (By the way the Journal seems to
be the most timely source of information on new computer products
outside of this network.)
The cost was reduced by a number of ploys so obvious it is a wonder
that no one has tried them yet. Some examples are:
1. The low speed of the printer allows the use of a stepping motor
instead of the more complicated control mechanism required for
faster printers.
2. Putting everything in one package allowed sharing of power
supplies, etc.
The consensus was that all of these engineering tricks had given
Coleco more than a few months lead on the competition.
It seems there was a company called Volkswagon that tried a similar
idea many years ago. It was quite successful, even to the point of
redefining the auto industry.MCMANIS%usc-eclc@sri-unix.UUCP (06/15/83)
From: Chuck McManis <MCMANIS@usc-eclc> On the ColecoVision, of course the "printer" is probably the Smith-Corona TP-1 or the SilverLake RO printer both of which go for about 400 retail, so figure <200 wholesale the Chips for <$100 and the tape/keyboard/joysticks for <50 so their cost is proabably less than $350 if I did my math correctly. And given the $600 price tag I suspect it is more like $300. Note: For those of you skeptics out there, go to one of these conferences and listen to the numbers the manufacturers are quoting for high (>100) quanities. I personally was quoted $100/Drive for DSDD 5.25 floppies if I could buy 101 of them. --Chuk -------
ron%brl-bmd@sri-unix.UUCP (06/16/83)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@brl-bmd> Smith Corona anounced a real cheap ($200) daisy wheel printer about a year ago. I have never seen one, I suspect that is probably the one used by Coleco. Has anyone seen one of the SC printers? -Ron