Search

By Tara Sexton IBM's long-anticipated re-entry into the home-computer market this week has polarized industry observers, whose early reactions to the new low-cost PCs range from praise to condemnation. IBM […]

Many dealers in the United Kingdom are offering discounts of ten to twenty five percent on PCs. This is not a professional way of selling. The buyer receives the boxes and has the responsibility for installing the hardware. The profit margin is so narrow that many dealers will end up bankrupt and customers will not receive the service they are due.

Honeywell NEC (HNS) Supercomputers has been charged with trying to sell supercomputers to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brigham Young University, and other US colleges at unfairly steep price reductions. The company, which is half-owned by NEC of Japan, has been marketing the Japanese-produced SX 2 supercomputer to US universities at extremely low prices. HNS may establish itself in the US supercomputer market if it sells a supercomputer to MIT. An SX 2 supercomputer was to have been delivered to MIT and a $500,000 annual maintenance cost would be assessed; MIT would use the supercomputer for the development of software and to test the capabilities of the computer. US politicians are determined to prevent the entry of NEC into the US supercomputer market.

The impact of the Apple Computer Inc's Macintosh II and Macintosh SE on corporate MIS buying remains uncertain. The machines offer MS-DOS, Unix, Ethernet and token ring network compatibilities, and analysts agree the MS-DOS compatibility gives added flexibility to MIS; however, one analyst says that Apple Computer lacks support programs sufficient to rival IBM. Apple is evaluating its support structure, saying that there will be changes by the end of 1987.