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From: pollack@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: New Coleco Home Computer - (nf)
Message-ID: <2217@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jun-83 22:51:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.2217
Posted: Mon Jun 13 22:51:54 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jun-83 22:20:01 EDT
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#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