Dear Readers,
If you haven’t heard by now Sinclair has announced a major price reduction for the QL. It is now available at under $300 from most of the companies who have been bringing you Timex/Sinclair related products in the past. Sinclair’s suggested price is now $299.
In this month’s and last month’s QL Report, Rob Curry has made a strong argument to support his contention that compared to Commodore’s Amiga and Atari ST,the QL is at least as good a computer. When you consider the software and peripherals already available for the QL (which has,of course, has been sold in England for over a year now) and the great software package of four high-quality programs that comes free with every QL, the QL is clearly the best buy. Now with the price reduction there is no comparison.
So now it won’t be long till the QL takes America by storm, right? That remains to be seen. Have you turned on your TV lately? Commodore is pumping serious bucks in advertising Amiga in all the big football games and popular prime time shows. It may be that advertising dollars and name-recognition will be the deciding factors in this race.
For some reason that doesn’t bother me a whole lot. After all, we Sinclairites have always been a rather exclusive group, at least in North America. (In Europe Sinclair is the most common brand of home computer.) Sure everybody and his brother bought a TS1000 when they first came out, but how many people had the temerity to stick it out. Just us,right?
Speaking of the good old days of ZX81s and SYNC magazine- when I first decided to buy a Sinclair ZX81, I believe the price was up around $300 for the computer and 16K Ram. (Of course by the time I convinced my wife to let me have one the price had dropped considerably). Now you can get the QL, an advanced computer for nearly the same price. That’s Sinclair technology for you.
128K Spectrum
We hear that Commodore is preparing to drop the Commodore 64 and switch completely to the 128 K version. Apparently Sinclair has a similar idea in mind for the Spectrum.
According to rumor the 128K Spectrum has been available in Spain and will be introduced in England in late 1986. Sinclair is picking up on some Timex’s innovations for the 2068-including two display modes, a joystick port, a sound chip, a bank switching of memory in 64K chunks.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: MIDWEST TIMEX SINCLAIR COMPUTER FEST
Just as we were going to press Jack Roberts of the TS Connection in Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Timex User Group called. He has been in touch with a Mr. Frank Favis from Indiana. Mr. Favis has been doing some preliminery work on the idea of a Midwest TS Computer Fair. I was invited to a meeting later this month in Cincinnati to consider the idea some more. At this point they have decided on early Spring ’86 as the time and Cincinnati as the likely location.
That’s all I know for now, but as details are confirmed TS Horizons will keep all of you informed. Given our close proximity to Cincinnati we hope to be a big part of the fair if it indeed comes to pass. TSH