TANDY USER GROUP NEWSLETTER, July, 1990 Material contained herein may be reproduced in whole or in part in user group newsletters. Please quote source as Tandy Corporation/Radio Shack. Send questions/suggestions to: Director of Market Planning, 700 One Tandy Center, Fort Worth, Texas 76102. THE HOME PC MARKET Let's talk about a NEW home market. No, not the "home market" we're all used to ... the one which is mostly office users doing their homework rather than staying long hours at work. It's not even the one where office PC users have a reason to do the same kinds of things at home. And it's not the "home office" either. In the context of this discussion, let's define the "home market" as computers which will be used by families who have never touched a computer before. In fact, let's assume the Smith family is such a family. Well, maybe we'll let one of the Smiths have a passing relationship with a computer at work, but not much more. Of course, the Smiths have several friends with computers in their homes ... after all, about 1 out of 4 families own one. The Smiths have occasionally noted that some of the things a PC could do would be kinda' neat, and maybe even helpful around the house. But, every time the Smiths looked at a PC in a store or watched a friend show off their own machine, two things became apparent. PCs were confusing and too hard to use. (It just wasn't worth the learning effort.) Second, they've been too expensive. An experienced user would say, "No way! Look how far we've come from the early days." Tandy's research has confirmed that the Smiths of the world have an entirely different conception of "easy to use" than our industry has. When Mrs. Smith wants to make a shopping list or Mr. Smith prepares his Christmas card list, they want to grab a pencil and paper and start writing. They are completely turned off by the idea of learning how to make these lists. Neither is interested in mastering something called a "database" or even a "filer." Even DeskMate, with the easy-to-use applications it has included, was still too much trouble for the Smiths. Tandy has been the leading supplier of PC-compatibles to the home market for 6 or 7 years. Our goal has been to make computers easy enough to use that their benefits could be realized by families with no "data processing type" jobs to do. Recently, IBM introduced the PS/1, which they said is for "people who have never touched a computer before." Most of the resulting news stories tried to define the PS/1's target user as some subset of the present PC market. In our view, it is a completely new potential user, with new and different ideas and needs. As you've no doubt heard by now, the new Tandy home computer will be announced on July 25 in New York City. We've done it right. Many writers have asked me to characterize the difference in IBM's product and ours. The best I can say now is that theirs appears to be a stripped-down business computer, while our system has been designed from the ground up for first-time user families. It is also a fully-functional, no-compromise PC that will run all of the popular office and personal software. All of the software furnished with our new computer has the advantage of one common user interface. Leaving a message or making that shopping list WILL be as simple as typing in your items. There is no setup. The Smiths won't even have to think about "loading" or "saving" things. The Tandy computer system is "state-of-the-art ease-of-use." What This Market Needs The new Tandy computer could only have been conceived through our years of market leadership, research, focus groups, and in-home testing with first-time users. (While IBM has been "interviewing thousands," we've been selling to millions of home users.) In our research, we discovered some interesting things. The concept of "ease-of-use" had to be re-thought completely. An almost "home appliance" approach was preferable, which means low power-consumption (about like a clock-radio), noise-free operation (no fan), pleasing one-piece CPU design, including all options ... and yes, some expansion is desirable, although the Smiths won't need network cards or other esoteric add-ons. Cost is the second critical issue, so we designed our product for the best possible cost/performance ratio, considering the needs of the target audience. Let's face it ... a conventional PC simply doesn't meet the needs of the Smith family. If it did, neither IBM nor Tandy (nor the others sure to follow) would be designing systems just for them. Most of these folks don't know or care about desktop publishing ... won't ever use even a spreadsheet, and may never want to deal with even a simple word processor. They don't need -- or need to pay for -- the latest piece of silicon or fastest available clock. The things the Smiths, and others like them, actually do with a PC was also a surprise. They're relatively mundane tasks, made easier by computer technology. You'll see them on July 25! In short, designing the right product meant adjusting our thinking away from the "traditional PC market" mindset. I think our design team has achieved quite a breakthrough. They have succeeded in applying the advantages of the PC to real home tasks, while making it easier than ever before to use and afford. Every writer who has seen the new system has been excited by it. IBM, by comparison, has stripped down a business machine, added some simple software, and hopes their users will find uses for it. They are offering the same type of solution we were offering several years ago. Tandy's new computer isn't right for everyone. If you're reading this newsletter, the chances are it won't be your PC of choice. Your skills are probably far enough advanced that you'll want a Tandy 1000 TL/2 or 2500 XL computer. But, it's important for you to know about the new one, because most first-time users rely heavily on advice from experienced friends. When you evaluate our new product (and its competitors), ask yourself... - Is it easy to use? Is there one interface throughout? - Is it affordable? How much is a "fully-configured" system? - Is it expandable? How expensive are the options? - Does it include the things home users may want -- game controllers, sound, quiet operation, choice of modems, port for an RS-232 device, printer port? - Is it attractive? We're going to look pretty good! MEMORY PRICING A heading like that would have struck fear into the heart of any PC user a year or so ago! Now, it's good news. If you've been wanting to upgrade your computer's memory, check out Radio Shack's current pricing. One megabyte SIMM kits have been reduced $50, while our most expensive 80ns 4 MB SIMM kits are down over $1000! If you're a Tandy 1000 TX, TL, or TL/2 computer owner, you may want to add the extra 128K of memory. Some of you probably think the extra RAM is used for RAM disks, print spoolers and the like. Not true. It is used as video RAM, and frees up some space from your 640K of addressible memory for other purposes. If you have never watched one of these computers run a graphics program with the extra memory, you've missed something. It can actually outrun the graphics on some '386-based machines! And, of course, the extra conventional memory is nice! Windows 3.0 Microsoft has announced Windows 3.0 (in case you've been on a deserted island for the past few weeks). The Tandy computers which have been certified by Microsoft for use with 3.0 include the 2500 XL, 2800 HD, 3000 NL, 4000, 4000 LX, 4000 SX, 4016 DX, 4016 SX, 4020 LX, 4025 LX, 4033 LX, and the Tandy 5000 MC computer. There was some confusion over our plans for Windows 3.0. We will offer it as a product. There are no current plans to bundle it with any Tandy computers, and we will do some "promotional bundling" for limited times. That's it for this month. Don't forget the new Radio Shack catalogs will be available around the first of August. I'll have some really exciting things to talk about in August. See you next month.