IBM Makes the Big Announcement....Finally. After two or three years of speculation users were finally introduced to IBM's idea of the future of microcomputing...and I think they may have a pretty good handle on it. They have announced four new PCs in the "Personal System/2" line, as well as a host of new products. I am not sure, but I believe this may be the largest single group of announcements in IBM's history. And the range of products is just as amazing! So here goes.... --IBM Personal System/2 Model 30 8086 based PC running at 8Mhz, 0 wait states, 640K of memory, either 2-720K floppies or 1-720K floppy and a 20MB hard disk. MCGA (part of the new graphics standard provided in all the new machines and discussed later), three PC-compatible expansion slots, serial, parallel, mouse port and clock. OS: IBM DOS 3.3 Price: approx. $1,500.00 --IBM Personal System/2 Model 50 80286 10Mhz, 1MB RAM, expandable to 7MB, VGA (the new graphics standard..discussed later), 1-1.4MB floppy, 20MB hard disk, three expansion slots (new style), serial, parallel, mouse port, and clock. OS: IBM DOS 3.3, IBM OS/2 Price: approx. $3,500.00 --IBM Personal System/2 Model 60 80286 10Mhz, 1MB RAM, expandable to 15MB, VGA (the new graphics standard..discussed later), 1-1.4MB floppy, 44MB or 70MB hard disk (optional 115MB), seven expansion slots (new style), serial, parallel, mouse port, and clock. OS: IBM DOS 3.3, IBM OS/2 Price: approx. $5,000.00 --IBM Personal System/2 Model 80 80386 16Mhz, 1MB or 2MB 80ns RAM, expandable to 16MB, VGA (the new graphics standard..discussed later), 1-1.4MB floppy, 44MB or 70MB hard disk (optional 115MB), seven expansion slots (new style), serial, parallel, mouse port, and clock. OS: IBM DOS 3.3, IBM OS/2 Price: approx. $???????? VGA (Video Gate Array) is the new IBM graphics standard which is a superset of all standards previously introduced, including monochrome, CGA and EGA, only with higher resolution. In a nutshell, it is everything EGA is, complete with EGA software compatibility, with PGA (Professional Graphics Adapter) resolution. It is very impressive. Resolution on the VGA is - Page 1 - 320x200 w/ 256 colors from a palette of 256,000, or 640x480 w/ 16 colors. Both are all point addressable. Text is displayed based on 9x16 character box. With the Model 50 and above their is an optional higher res graphics option available that plugs into a special slot on the mother board. All the graphics are a 2-3x speed improvement over similar graphics on a PC. There is a VGA adapter available for use on standard PCs to make the compatible with the new standard. Price should be about the same as EGA. To go with this new standard are a line of analog (as opposed to RGB) monitors, including a soft-white monochrome which displays 64 shades of grey, a 14" Color, a 12" Color and a "16 Color designed for CAD/CAM type applications. The best news is the monochrome is approx. $280 and the color is $420 (Don't ask me which color. My preference is the 12" color.) All present software that does not violate the rules IBM has told all vendors to avoid violating runs like a charm. Everything I have tried worked just fine. I watched Great Plains Accounting software run as the Great Plains boys got their first look at the machines and it screamed through them smooth as silk. They were very impressed. Other features of the system include battery backed up CMOS that stores all the system parameters....no switches anywhere to set. You can also program a password into the system so that it will not boot without the password, a feature particularly nice in a network environment. The 1.4MB floppies transfer data significantly faster than the older 720K drives and are nice to work with. The hard disks are all IBM made and feature a SDSI interface which has a throughput four times greater than PC systems we're used to. System throughput is supposed to be significantly better than anything we have seen. The 8Mhz 8086 based Model 30 is said to equal the 8Mhz ATs. Those who have used it today think it is twice as fast, but no benchmarks have been run. Norton registers a 10.1 on the new system, but this does not take into consideration the higher speed bus, which I think should yield significantly higher performance in all applications. Benchmarks will be available soon. New DOS: With the new systems come DOS 3.3. Along with general tweaking over all new features include: -FDISK now supports partitioning of large drives into multiple volumes -FASTOPEN command acts as a sort of caching of file handles that are frequently opened -DOS batch facility to create automatic procedure files -CALL command for nested batch files -APPEND command to allow tieing subdirectories together. - Page 2 - -BACKUP/RESTORE,DATE/TIME,ATTRIB and SYS improvements -TopView support -Better hard disk support for improved performance -Support for 1.4 meg disks. -Support of file transfers between machines using the parallel printer port...transfers scream! -Many more features Also introduces was Operating System/2 (OS/2) which is IBMs long awaited (and will continue to wait until Sept.) multitasking operating system for the 80286 and 80386 systems. It will address up to 16MB of memory. Supports any number of windows running simultaneous applications. Comes in Standard and Extended additions. Extended supports a built in relational database manager that operates under Structured Query Language (SQL) and ties in nicely with mainframe environments. It maintains DOS compatibility, with improvements targeted in that area before release. Menu driven system. Context sensitive help. Other new products: Optical Disk--200M removable cartridge Write-Once, Read-Many (WORM) disk drive. Cartridges are approx. $20. You can run up to four controllers in a PC, with each controller handling two drives, for a total of 8 drives for a total storage of 1600MB. Access times are about twice the speed of floppies. Targeted for large archival type storage needs. External Tape Backup: 40 and 55 meg tape cartridge backup system with SY-TOS tape operating system. Quietwriter III: High quality print at speeds from 100-171 cps in LQ or 160-274 in draft mode. VERY quiet, very impressive. Proprinter X24, XL24: 24 pin versions of the popular Proprinter line. 240 cps draft, 80 cps LQ with four type fonts. Proprinter II, XL: New models of the standard 9 pin Proprinters with some new features. Image Scanner: Allows scanning of graphics images. Networks: Both the IBM broadband network and the IBM Token Ring got some hardware and software boosts. IBM PC Music Feature: Brings an incredible music synthesizer capability to the PC, allowing the use of the PC to study, play and compose music with your PC. Ties in with a MIDI interface to hook keyboards, amplifiers, etc. to the system. - Page 3 - SolutionPacs: These are software packages bundled with hardware for specific applications. The one I glanced at was for their new desktop publishing system, which includes the software and their new laser printer. I have been told that a Model 50, a laser and the software package will go for under $7,000. These are only a handful of the new products out of a stack of Product Announcements that was almost 4" deep!! Easily 300 pages of documentation!! So what is the impact of all this on the market? Who knows. It definitely puts IBM back in the middle of the fray, and give corporate America a reason to look back towards IBM when it is time to add more PCs. They are at a price range that any serious business user has to give them serious consideration for many reasons, not the least of which is the comfort of those three little letters "I-B-M". I also think it will spell the doom for some, not all, but some of the clone makers....those that fall will be those that deserve to fall because they aren't doing anything to support the end user. It will place more price pressure on the clones who have less to offer....and with the low production costs, the prices of these new machines will come down. Don't be surprised two years from now if you can pick up a Model 50 for $1,500. Welcome back to the world of PCs, IBM! You've done a nice job! Loren D. Jones, Sysop Fargo IBM PC Users Group RBBS Modem: 701-293-5973 - Page 4 -