By Scott Colvey on Wednesday, 12 September 2007
 “You’re acquired!”. We can’t help wondering if that’s
the little joke Rupert Murdoch muttered to himself, shortly after wresting Amstrad
from Alan
Sugar. Of course, the sale of Amstrad comes as no surprise — these
days the firm makes little else other than digital TV set-top boxes, and Sky
is pretty much its only customer. Looked at another way, thanks to The Apprentice,
Alan Sugar is a bigger star now than his company could ever again hope to be.
However, things weren’t always so marginal for Amstrad.
Twenty years ago Alan Michael Sugar Trading — or AMSTrad
— ruled the UK computer market. And by rule, we really mean utterly dominated.
If you wanted a word processor in the 1980s, it had to be the Amstrad
PCW. Fancied a ‘proper’ business PC instead? During the Thatcher
era, the Essex-born Amstrad
PC 1512/1640 was the only acceptable choice. And for home computer enthusiasts?
Well, okay, Amstrad’s 8-bit CPC
range turned out to be duds, but Sugar overcame that little inconvenience by
buying Sinclair and taking control of the then-hugely-popular Spectrum
brand.
Riding this wave of success, Amstrad decided to chance its arm in the portable
computing arena. As it turned out, it was buyers’ arms that were to be
chanced — at nearly 6kg, the Amstrad
PPC was barely more portable than a desktop PC with a handle. And in several
respects, that’s exactly what it was.
A major hint was the keyboard — a full-size 102-key affair with little
attempt at miniaturisation. This was hinged to form a lid for the computer itself,
which had a flip-up LCD screen. Even closed, the thing seemed enormous. But
as noted, there was a handle on the side — surely Amstrad’s sole justification
for marketing the PPC as a portable computer.
However, such criticisms must be considered in context. For the time, the Amstrad
PPC was really quite novel. It may not have been lightweight or pretty, but
it was cheap and effective. And in 1988, the prospect of a fully IBM-compatible
PC for a pound under £400 appealed to many.
The first 512Kb model sold well enough to prompt Amstrad to launch several
updated models, with the ‘best’ having 640Kb of RAM, two integrated
3.5" disk drives and a modem. This was capable of transferring data at
2.4Kbit/s, which is just about 1,000 times slower than a current run-of-the-mill
2Mbit/s broadband connection.
However, other modems of the day could manage only 300bit/s and given that
this was a time when even something as apparently so simple as changing screen
resolution required fiddling with tiny DIP switches on the motherboard, such
a speed probably seemed amazing to the half-dozen Prestel
subscribers that ever made use of it.
Product: Amstrad PPC 512/640
Released: 1988
Price: From £399
Specifications
Processor: NEC V30 (8MHz)
Memory: 512Kb (at launch) or 640Kb
Size: 450 x 230 x 100mm (closed)
Weight: 6kg
Screen: 640 x 200-pixel greyscale LCD with CGA emulation
Storage: One or two 3.5in, 720Kb floppy disk drives
Other notables: Built-in modem (up to 2,400bps/V22bis)
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