Apricot Computers
Encyclopedia
Apricot Computers is a British
manufacturer of business personal computer
s, originally founded in 1965 as "Applied Computer Techniques" (ACT), changing its name to Apricot Computers, Ltd. in the 1980s. It was a wholly owned UK company until it was acquired in the early 1990s by the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
, which hoped that Apricot would help them compete against Japanese PC manufacturers, in particular NEC
which commanded over 50% of the Japanese market at the time. Mitsubishi eventually shut down the Apricot brand; a management buyout resulted in new company Network Si UK Ltd being formed. In 2008 a new, independent Apricot company was launched in the UK.
Apricot was a remarkably innovative computer hardware company. The Birmingham R&D center could build every aspect of a personal computer except for the integrated circuit
s (chips) themselves, from custom BIOS and system-level programming to the silk-screen of motherboards and metal-bending for internal chassis all the way to radio-frequency testing of a finished system. This coupled with a smart and aggressive engineering team allowed Apricot to be the first company in the world with several technical innovations including the first commercial shipment of an all-in-one system with a 3.5-inch floppy drive (ahead of Apple), while in the early 90s they manufactured one of the world’s most secure x86-based PCs, sold exclusively to the UK government.
Their technical innovation led them down some paths which were technically advanced but proved to be highly disadvantageous in the marketplace. For example when IBM
abandoned their ill-fated but technically superior Micro Channel Architecture
(MCA), Apricot was the only other OEM using it, in the Apricot Qi and VX FT ranges of PCs. This left the company at a technical dead-end without the financial or market power which helped IBM survive the failure of MCA.
Apricot continued to experiment with unusual form-factors in a market dominated by standardised 'beige boxes'. They produced a range of high-availability servers (the VX and Suhogun ranges) with integrated uninterruptible power supply
(UPS), low-profile 'LANStation' PCs specifically designed for use on office networks, and diskless workstations booted over the network.
This long-running pattern of tenaciously investing in technical innovation and complete end-to-end system design and manufacture created technically excellent computers, but meant that Apricot was slow to adapt as the worldwide market grew and changed. By the mid 1990s major PC OEMs such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard were outsourcing their own complete end-to-end system design and manufacture to Original Design Manufacturer
s (ODMs) based in Taiwan, and were moving at least some of their manufacturing to cheaper locations overseas.
Apricot was very late in adopting this method of manufacturing, even though a motherboard designed and manufactured in Asia cost Apricot as little as a third of the cost of design and testing in Birmingham and manufacture in Scotland.
Apricot eventually tried to move to outsourcing but the market outpaced them, and MELCO closed the company down, selling off the final assets in 1999. A management buyout resulted in new company Network Si UK Ltd being formed.
, built by another company but marketed under the ACT brand. In America it was a moderate success. Later in 1982 ACT signed a deal with Victor
to distribute the "Victor 9000" as the ACT "Sirius 1" in the UK
and Europe
. It sold for £2754 and was a commercial success, but did not become popular in the US. The "Sirius 1" ran MS-DOS but was not hardware-compatible with the IBM PC
.
In September 1983 the Apricot PC
was released, based on an Intel 8086
microprocessor running at 4.77 MHz. It was often referred to as the 'ACT Apricot'. It ran MS-DOS
or CP/M-86
but was not compatible at a hardware level with the IBM PC
. It had two floppy disks, and was one of the first systems to use 3.5" disks, rather than the 5.25" disks which were the norm at the time.
The graphics quality was critically acclaimed, with an 800 x 400 resolution and a keyboard with eight "normal" function keys and six flat programmable ones, associated with a built-in LCD screen (40 characters / 2 lines) which displayed the current function of the keys, or could be configured to echo the current command line in MS-DOS. The keyboard contained an integrated calculator; the result of a calculation could be sent to the computer where it would appear on the command line, or in the current application. Microsoft Word
and Multiplan
were supplied with the Apricot PC. Lotus 123 was also available, and took advantage of the machine's high-resolution graphics. A flap covered the floppy drives when not in use. The industrial design of the machine was well conceived. The keyboard could be clipped to the base of the machine, and an integrated handle used for transporting it. The supplied green phosphor monitor had a nylon mesh glare filter.
A model with a built-in 10Mb hard disk (known as the Apricot PC Xi) was made available later in 1984.
In 1984 ACT released a home computer
, the "Apricot F1." It ran MS-DOS with "Activity", a GUI
front end; like the Apricot PC, it was not IBM PC compatible
. The machine was only successful in the UK
. It was bundled with software for graphics, communication, word processing, a spreadsheet, some games, and system tools. It had one 3.5" floppy disk drive.
The same infra-red trackball
pointing device used with the Apricot Portable was also available for the F1. Also in 1984, the Apricot Portable
was released, with an infra-red keyboard, a voice system, 4.77 MHz CPU, 640 x 200 LCD display for £1965.
In 1985 ACT was renamed "Apricot Computers". By this time, the F1 had become one model in the F Series; other machines in the series were the F1e (a cheaper F1 with less RAM standing at 256KB); the F2 (with two floppy drives) and the F10 (with a 10MB Rodime
hard drive, 512KB RAM and a more conventional-looking infra-red keyboard). The Activity GUI was replaced by GEM
. The F1e contained a 360KB single sided floppy drive, and the F10 contained a 720KB double sided drive. Some F1e computers shipped with an expansion card that could also be used in the F10, that would modulate the RGB video signal to RF enabling the computer to be used with a domestic television set. This card also contained a composite video output. The machine was unusual in that it contained the same 36-way Centronics
parallel port that appeared on many contemporary printers (and continued to do so until virtually replaced with USB and ethernet). This means that a standard 36-way centronics male to centronics male cable needs to be used to connect a printer - and these were hard to find since IBM had introduced the DB25F
connector.
The F-series infra-red keyboards contained a real-time clock; during the machine's boot sequence, the BIOS would graphically prompt the user to press the 'DATE/TIME' key. This would transmit the date and time settings from the keyboard to the computer via IR, setting the RTC in the computer. The Infra-Red trackball could also be used as a mouse by tilting the unit forward - the ball protrudes from the top and bottom of the unit and can roll on a surface. The units also shipped with fibre-optic 'Light Pipes' that can channel the IR signals, designed to prevent multiple keyboards and trackballs from interfering with adjacent machines in office environments where multiple F-series computers were (predicted to be) in use.
The F10 shipped with a 'PC Emulator' which provided very limited text-mode support for IBM PC compatible applications, but was unable to run applications that used graphics modes. Microsoft Windows
1.03, little-known and little-used at the time, would not run in this environment.
The last Apricot computer not to be IBM compatible was the XEN (October 1985), a 286-based system intended to compete with the IBM AT and running Microsoft Windows (now known as Windows 1.0
). It was superseded in 1986 by the XEN-i, the first in a line of IBM-compatible systems. The Xen-i initially shipped with a 5.25" floppy drive to further improve its IBM-compatibility. The 3.5" drive made a reappearance when IBM themselves switched formats with the release of the PS/2 range.
In 1989 a cover story in Byte
magazine announced the Apricot VX FT Server as the world's first machine to incorporate the Intel 80486 microprocessor. This machine, designed by Bob Cross, was a fault-tolerant file server based on Micro Channel Architecture, incorporating an external RAM cache and its own UPS. The VX FT line consisted of Series 400 and Series 800, with four different models each. These (and their other systems) were manufactured in their state-of-the-art factory in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland.
British magazines dedicated to the early Apricots were Apricot User, which had the official approval of Apricot Computers, and the more technically oriented Apricot File
.
systems. Apricot took the opportunity to change its name back to the original, ACT.
Although ACT's proprietary computers were successful in the UK, the IBM PC had achieved critical mass in the US market before ACT could make an impression.
Apricot's acquisition by Mitsubishi marked the end of their unique design style. Subsequent products were far more conventional designs. Mitsubishi decided to pull out of PC manufacture and shut down the Apricot brand; Apricot's assets were sold. A management buyout resulted in a new company, Network Si UK Ltd.
, London and on 15 October 2008 relaunched the brand with the Apricot Picobook Pro
, a VIA
NanoBook
-based netbook
. The 2008 logo is very similar to that formerly used by Mitsubishi a decade earlier.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
manufacturer of business personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s, originally founded in 1965 as "Applied Computer Techniques" (ACT), changing its name to Apricot Computers, Ltd. in the 1980s. It was a wholly owned UK company until it was acquired in the early 1990s by the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Mitsubishi Electric
is a multinational electronics and information technology company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group....
, which hoped that Apricot would help them compete against Japanese PC manufacturers, in particular NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
which commanded over 50% of the Japanese market at the time. Mitsubishi eventually shut down the Apricot brand; a management buyout resulted in new company Network Si UK Ltd being formed. In 2008 a new, independent Apricot company was launched in the UK.
Apricot was a remarkably innovative computer hardware company. The Birmingham R&D center could build every aspect of a personal computer except for the integrated circuit
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
s (chips) themselves, from custom BIOS and system-level programming to the silk-screen of motherboards and metal-bending for internal chassis all the way to radio-frequency testing of a finished system. This coupled with a smart and aggressive engineering team allowed Apricot to be the first company in the world with several technical innovations including the first commercial shipment of an all-in-one system with a 3.5-inch floppy drive (ahead of Apple), while in the early 90s they manufactured one of the world’s most secure x86-based PCs, sold exclusively to the UK government.
Their technical innovation led them down some paths which were technically advanced but proved to be highly disadvantageous in the marketplace. For example when IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
abandoned their ill-fated but technically superior Micro Channel Architecture
Micro Channel architecture
Micro Channel Architecture was a proprietary 16- or 32-bit parallel computer bus introduced by IBM in 1987 which was used on PS/2 and other computers through the mid 1990s.- Background :...
(MCA), Apricot was the only other OEM using it, in the Apricot Qi and VX FT ranges of PCs. This left the company at a technical dead-end without the financial or market power which helped IBM survive the failure of MCA.
Apricot continued to experiment with unusual form-factors in a market dominated by standardised 'beige boxes'. They produced a range of high-availability servers (the VX and Suhogun ranges) with integrated uninterruptible power supply
Uninterruptible power supply
An uninterruptible power supply, also uninterruptible power source, UPS or battery/flywheel backup, is an electrical apparatus that provides emergency power to a load when the input power source, typically mains power, fails...
(UPS), low-profile 'LANStation' PCs specifically designed for use on office networks, and diskless workstations booted over the network.
This long-running pattern of tenaciously investing in technical innovation and complete end-to-end system design and manufacture created technically excellent computers, but meant that Apricot was slow to adapt as the worldwide market grew and changed. By the mid 1990s major PC OEMs such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard were outsourcing their own complete end-to-end system design and manufacture to Original Design Manufacturer
Original Design Manufacturer
An original design manufacturer is a company which designs and manufactures a product which is specified and eventually branded by another firm for sale. Such companies allow the brand firm to produce without having to engage in the organization or running of a factory...
s (ODMs) based in Taiwan, and were moving at least some of their manufacturing to cheaper locations overseas.
Apricot was very late in adopting this method of manufacturing, even though a motherboard designed and manufactured in Asia cost Apricot as little as a third of the cost of design and testing in Birmingham and manufacture in Scotland.
Apricot eventually tried to move to outsourcing but the market outpaced them, and MELCO closed the company down, selling off the final assets in 1999. A management buyout resulted in new company Network Si UK Ltd being formed.
1980s
In 1982 ACT released their first microcomputerMicrocomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
, built by another company but marketed under the ACT brand. In America it was a moderate success. Later in 1982 ACT signed a deal with Victor
Sirius Systems Technology
Sirius Systems Technology was a personal computer manufacturer in Scotts Valley, California. It was founded in 1980 by Chuck Peddle and Chris Fish, formerly of MOS Technology and capitalized by Walter Kidde Inc. In late 1982 Sirius acquired Victor Business Systems from Kidde and changed its name...
to distribute the "Victor 9000" as the ACT "Sirius 1" in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. It sold for £2754 and was a commercial success, but did not become popular in the US. The "Sirius 1" ran MS-DOS but was not hardware-compatible with the IBM PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
.
In September 1983 the Apricot PC
Apricot PC
The Apricot PC was Apricot Computers' first personal computer made for business use. The press received it well, especially for the high resolution of its time and its trackball cable . It is the first non-Japanese computer using 3.5" Sony floppy disc units.It uses a Intel 8086 processor running...
was released, based on an Intel 8086
Intel 8086
The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
microprocessor running at 4.77 MHz. It was often referred to as the 'ACT Apricot'. It ran MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
or CP/M-86
CP/M-86
CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The commands are those of CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format...
but was not compatible at a hardware level with the IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
. It had two floppy disks, and was one of the first systems to use 3.5" disks, rather than the 5.25" disks which were the norm at the time.
The graphics quality was critically acclaimed, with an 800 x 400 resolution and a keyboard with eight "normal" function keys and six flat programmable ones, associated with a built-in LCD screen (40 characters / 2 lines) which displayed the current function of the keys, or could be configured to echo the current command line in MS-DOS. The keyboard contained an integrated calculator; the result of a calculation could be sent to the computer where it would appear on the command line, or in the current application. Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
and Multiplan
MultiPlan
Multiplan was an early spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft. Known initially by the code name "EP" , it was introduced in 1982 as a competitor for VisiCalc....
were supplied with the Apricot PC. Lotus 123 was also available, and took advantage of the machine's high-resolution graphics. A flap covered the floppy drives when not in use. The industrial design of the machine was well conceived. The keyboard could be clipped to the base of the machine, and an integrated handle used for transporting it. The supplied green phosphor monitor had a nylon mesh glare filter.
A model with a built-in 10Mb hard disk (known as the Apricot PC Xi) was made available later in 1984.
In 1984 ACT released a home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
, the "Apricot F1." It ran MS-DOS with "Activity", a GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
front end; like the Apricot PC, it was not IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
. The machine was only successful in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. It was bundled with software for graphics, communication, word processing, a spreadsheet, some games, and system tools. It had one 3.5" floppy disk drive.
The same infra-red trackball
Trackball
A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down mouse with an exposed protruding ball. The user rolls the ball with the thumb, fingers, or the palm of the hand to move a cursor...
pointing device used with the Apricot Portable was also available for the F1. Also in 1984, the Apricot Portable
Apricot Portable
The Apricot Portable was a portable computer made by Apricot Computers, first released in 1984. It had a 3.5" floppy drive, 4.77 MHz CPU and 256 KiB RAM. It was the first computer to use an 80-column/25-line LCD and speech recognition for input/output. The speech recognition software held 4096...
was released, with an infra-red keyboard, a voice system, 4.77 MHz CPU, 640 x 200 LCD display for £1965.
In 1985 ACT was renamed "Apricot Computers". By this time, the F1 had become one model in the F Series; other machines in the series were the F1e (a cheaper F1 with less RAM standing at 256KB); the F2 (with two floppy drives) and the F10 (with a 10MB Rodime
Rodime
Rodime was an electronics company specialising in hard disks, based in Glenrothes, Scotland. It was founded in 1979 by several Scottish and American former employees of Burroughs Corporation and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1986, becoming Rodime PLC....
hard drive, 512KB RAM and a more conventional-looking infra-red keyboard). The Activity GUI was replaced by GEM
Graphical Environment Manager
GEM was a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors...
. The F1e contained a 360KB single sided floppy drive, and the F10 contained a 720KB double sided drive. Some F1e computers shipped with an expansion card that could also be used in the F10, that would modulate the RGB video signal to RF enabling the computer to be used with a domestic television set. This card also contained a composite video output. The machine was unusual in that it contained the same 36-way Centronics
Centronics
Centronics Data Computer Corporation was a pioneering American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name.-The beginning:Centronics began as a division of Wang Laboratories...
parallel port that appeared on many contemporary printers (and continued to do so until virtually replaced with USB and ethernet). This means that a standard 36-way centronics male to centronics male cable needs to be used to connect a printer - and these were hard to find since IBM had introduced the DB25F
D-subminiature
The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems....
connector.
The F-series infra-red keyboards contained a real-time clock; during the machine's boot sequence, the BIOS would graphically prompt the user to press the 'DATE/TIME' key. This would transmit the date and time settings from the keyboard to the computer via IR, setting the RTC in the computer. The Infra-Red trackball could also be used as a mouse by tilting the unit forward - the ball protrudes from the top and bottom of the unit and can roll on a surface. The units also shipped with fibre-optic 'Light Pipes' that can channel the IR signals, designed to prevent multiple keyboards and trackballs from interfering with adjacent machines in office environments where multiple F-series computers were (predicted to be) in use.
The F10 shipped with a 'PC Emulator' which provided very limited text-mode support for IBM PC compatible applications, but was unable to run applications that used graphics modes. Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
1.03, little-known and little-used at the time, would not run in this environment.
The last Apricot computer not to be IBM compatible was the XEN (October 1985), a 286-based system intended to compete with the IBM AT and running Microsoft Windows (now known as Windows 1.0
Windows 1.0
Windows 1.0 is a 16-bit graphical operating environment, developed by Microsoft and released on 20 November 1985. It was Microsoft's first attempt to implement a multi-tasking graphical user interface-based operating environment on the PC platform. Windows 1.0 was the first version of Windows...
). It was superseded in 1986 by the XEN-i, the first in a line of IBM-compatible systems. The Xen-i initially shipped with a 5.25" floppy drive to further improve its IBM-compatibility. The 3.5" drive made a reappearance when IBM themselves switched formats with the release of the PS/2 range.
In 1989 a cover story in Byte
Byte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...
magazine announced the Apricot VX FT Server as the world's first machine to incorporate the Intel 80486 microprocessor. This machine, designed by Bob Cross, was a fault-tolerant file server based on Micro Channel Architecture, incorporating an external RAM cache and its own UPS. The VX FT line consisted of Series 400 and Series 800, with four different models each. These (and their other systems) were manufactured in their state-of-the-art factory in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland.
British magazines dedicated to the early Apricots were Apricot User, which had the official approval of Apricot Computers, and the more technically oriented Apricot File
Apricot File
Apricot File was a British magazine catering for users of early Apricot Computers microcomputer systems. It was based in London, published by TP Group and edited throughout its lifetime by Dennis Jarrett...
.
1990s
In January 1990 Apricot acquired Information Technology Limited, a UK-based developer of UNIXUnix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
systems. Apricot took the opportunity to change its name back to the original, ACT.
Although ACT's proprietary computers were successful in the UK, the IBM PC had achieved critical mass in the US market before ACT could make an impression.
Apricot's acquisition by Mitsubishi marked the end of their unique design style. Subsequent products were far more conventional designs. Mitsubishi decided to pull out of PC manufacture and shut down the Apricot brand; Apricot's assets were sold. A management buyout resulted in a new company, Network Si UK Ltd.
Apricot come-back (2008)
Mitsubishi continued to use the Apricot name on several computers until 2008, when a new, independent company was launched in the UK. On July 2, 2008 a prototype was introduced to the UK press at the Savoy HotelSavoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by...
, London and on 15 October 2008 relaunched the brand with the Apricot Picobook Pro
Apricot Picobook Pro
The Apricot Picobook Pro is the first product of the newly reformed Apricot Computers. It is a netbook based on the VIA NanoBook, first shown to the press on October 15 2008 at a price of £279 for the 900VL with SUSE Linux and £328 for the 900VX with Windows XP Home Edition.- Specifications :*CPU:...
, a VIA
VIA
- Science and technology :* MOS Technology 6522, Versatile Interface Adapter* Via , a through-connection* VIA Technologies, a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, subnotebooks, and Ultra-Mobile PCs...
NanoBook
NanoBook
The NanoBook is an ultra-mobile PC reference design by VIA Technologies, Inc. It has a clamshell form factor, a 7-inch 800×480 touchscreen display, and a full-size keyboard. It weighs less than 850 g and has a claimed battery life of up to 4.5 hours...
-based netbook
Netbook
Netbooks are a category of small, lightweight, legacy-free, and inexpensive laptop computers.At their inception in late 2007 as smaller notebooks optimized for low weight and low cost — netbooks omitted certain features , featured smaller screens and keyboards, and offered reduced computing...
. The 2008 logo is very similar to that formerly used by Mitsubishi a decade earlier.
Further reading
- Stephen Morris: Getting to Know Your Apricot, Duckworth, 1984, ISBN 0715618393
- Mario de Pace: The Apricot Personal Computer, Collins, 1985, ISBN 9780003830026
- Peter Gosling: The Apricot, Pitman, 1985, ISBN 0273023179
- Peter Rodwell: Advanced User's Guide to the Apricot Business Computer, Heinemann, London, 1986, ISBN 9780434917440
- Peter Rodwell: Introducing the Apricot business computer, Heinemann, London, 1986, ISBN 043491746X
- Peter Rodwell: Introducing the Apricot, Heinemann, London, 1986, ISBN 9780434917464
- Peter Rodwell: Business Computing with the Apricot, Heinemann, London, 1986, ISBN 9780434917457
- Stephen Morris: Introducing Psion Xchange Software on the Act Apricot, Duckworth, 1985, ISBN 9780715619513
