Acorn Extends Best-Selling A3000 Range Acorn Computers is complementing its best-selling A3000 computer with two new and enhanced models designed to meet the growing needs of both consumer and educational users at aggressively reduced prices. The A3010 series has been designed with the home user in mind, whilst the A3020s have been produced for the Education market. The A3010 and A3020 are both driven by the new ARM250 microprocessor from Advanced RISC Machines. This runs at 12MHz and delivers 6 MIPs (millions of instructions per second) - providing some 1.4 times the performance of a 33MHz 386DX. The ARM 250 was purpose designed for Acorn and integrates an ARM 2 processor with the other controller chips in one small device. The new computers all feature a 2MByte floppy disc drive, a bi-directional parallel port, full VGA monitor output, and Acorn's multitasking RISC OS 3 operating system. They all have a serial port and an expansion slot provided to allow the connection of other devices such as video cameras, scanners or MIDI instruments. The A3010 has a grey case and green function keys, and was designed following feedback from the consumer market place. Reflecting the needs of the home consumer, who wants to get up and running straight away at the lowest possible cost, it has a UHF TV modulator to allow the computer to be attached directly to a TV screen and two ports for attaching switched joysticks to enhance the playing of games. The A3010 offers 32-bit performance in a 1MB expandable system. It is available as part of both a new "Family Solution" and the "Learning Curve". The A3020 is cream coloured with red function keys to complement the styling of the leading products in the education market. It has been designed by Acorn in response to the changing and expanding needs of education, particularly in the primary sector. The A3020 has internal network interface sockets and hard drive support built on to the circuit board allowing it to be fitted with a hard drive and connected to a network and still have room for a separate internal interface to be installed. The new A3000 range exploits the wealth of software available for home, education and business use - now in excess of 2,000 titles. The multitasking environment of RISC OS 3 - provided for the first time on the A3000 range - allows applications to work together to provide a tailor-made solution for the user. As with all of Acorn's RISC computers, a suite of applications is provided with each machine to the get the user started immediately. This includes both a drawing and painting program, a text editor, a desktop calculator, alarm clock and also music program software. The new "Family Solution" is designed for those who are new to computing. It consists of an A3010 together with a word processor (EasiWord) and a game (Quest for Gold). To help the inexperienced user, there is a comprehensive audio training tape and a number of blank discs are provided to complete the package. The "Learning Curve" comes with a range of software which is designed to pull together the needs of computing in schools, at the office and in the home. It is a complete system comprising a colour monitor and an A3010 with 2MB of RAM. In addition to the enclosures found in the "Family Solution" there is a set of Genesis applications and a guide to the National Curriculum. Acorn's PC Soft with DR_DOS 6 is also provided to enable PC programs to be run by the parent wishing to bring work home from the office. The educational range of A3020s have as standard 2MBytes of RAM upgradeable to 4MB. Reflecting the growing importance of networking in all sectors of Education, the A3020 provides the facility for either Econet or Ethernet to be fitted without the loss of the internal expansion slot. The low cost A3020 2MB floppy disc model has the option of an internal IDE 60MB hard disc. It also comes complete with a choice of colour matched monitors. The new range of A3000s start at #424.68 (#499 inc VAT) for the A3010 "Family Solution" and go up to #899 for the A3020 with 60 MB hard disc and colour monitor. Acorn's Marketing Director, Mike O'Riordan said "The new A3000s have a competitive edge over other machines aimed at the consumer and education markets in a number of key areas. For a start, they offer the lowest cost of access to the power of RISC computing giving unrivalled performance for their price. No other manufacturer in the world can currently offer RISC computing for under #500! "The A3020 was designed specifically for the education market sector in which we have set the standards for the past decade. We have always know that education has differing needs over and above that of other markets, and these new products have been specifically designed to meet these needs. " he added. Acorn's Product Manager, Kevin Coleman said "These machines offer superb value for money. Not only is the initial purchase price low, but the cost of ownership is low as well. The prices of software and hardware add-ons are extremely low when compared with similar quality products on other platforms. In addition, with our new extended warranty arrangements, customers have the added satisfaction of knowing that in the unlikely event of something going wrong help is always at hand. Ends _______________________________________________________________________________ aglover@acorn.co.uk, moderator of comp.sys.acorn.announce. Submissions to announce-request@acorn.co.uk, other related mail to announcer@acorn.co.uk.