Acorn's Xchange Offers School Less for More! 

A Birmingham dealer is proudly showing off a monster of an exhibit which 
amply demonstrates that Acorn Computers' Xchange scheme really was an offer 
schools could not afford to miss.         

Daco Software, of Tyseley, in Birmingham, was more than a little surprised 
to receive a gargantuan thirty year old Honeywell Bull computer when a local 
school took advantage of the Xchange initiative to purchase new Acorn 
Archimedes systems. 

Acorn set up Xchange to help schools deliver an effective IT strategy. It 
promised  educational institutions up to #100 for any computer 
part-exchanged for a new Acorn Archimedes 32-bit RISC platform and presented 
schools with the perfect opportunity to replace obsolete equipment with 
state of the art technology.   

Acorn's General Manager of Education, Peter Talbot, said "We launched the 
Xchange programme to encourage schools to get rid of their old computers, 
but when we asked them to bring out their dead we hadn't quite expected such 
a dinosaur!"   

The antique machine was just one of the items handed over by Bromsgrove 
Lower School when they bought an Acorn A5000 and two Acorn A3020s. "When we 
opened our new Technology Centre a few years ago, we asked parents for old 
equipment to display in an exhibition of Computing through the Ages" said 
Colin Pickering, Head of Information Technology. "The Honeywell machine was 
given to us by a local firm of solicitors. We found it very useful to 
demonstrate to the children just how much  computers have reduced in size 
and gained in performance over the years; but now that our display is 
finished, Acorn's Xchange scheme offers us the ideal chance to gain further 
benefit by trading it in against a brand new 32-bit RISC machine."   

He went on: "Whilst we shall miss our mammoth exhibit, it was the size of my 
desk, complete with bottom drawer, whereas our new Acorn system will fit 
neatly into just a fraction of that space!" 

ENDS 

Notes to Editors: The Honeywell Bull computer measures approximately 69cm 
(27") high, 51cm (20") wide and 76cm (30") deep.