The Smith Column

Has anybody heard anything on the Nine O'Clock News about the Government's Department For Information Technology getting together with the Department Of Trade And Industry to help out a brand new UK-based computer manufacturer based in Maidenhead and using a name like Amigo or like, erm, something?

I thought not. For a start we don't have a Department Of Information Technology. What would be the point of that aside from setting dangerous precedents for departments with the word `information' in them? And secondly, while seeming to be quite happy to flog off industries left right and centre (Der Jaguar for a start) we don't appear to have a good track record for standing behind our own IT initiatives.

Now call me a revisionist old fogey but I would have thought it would have been a good idea of Mr Heseltine to make a visit to our own dear David Pleasance and, over a pint in the local, discuss the possibilities of making Amiga UK a going concern for the future. It could well be an idea to have a domestic personal computer, alongside the Archimedes and Amstrad that could be used at the cutting edge of the Information Superhighway. It would be an even better idea to have a head start by having this Amigo or Amiglia thingie installed in a few million households to start with. Fancy if this installed user base were also loyal to the brand through thick and very, very thin indeed.

Just think, a UK-produced home computer for under £500 that had an operating system that could already do most of the things that the other big O/Ss are fighting over? A non-frightening

piece of technology already familiar to the generation of users who are now entering business?

Naive? Yes probably. This notion of supporting native industries with Government clout does rather go against the current trend for... well for allowing market forces such as Japanese trade restrictions, US trade restrictions and European government support to take their natural course.

It's plain daft of me to want a little slice of my taxes to go towards increasing Gross Domestic Product and employment in an industry that could, in the next 10 years, see the UK in a leading position once the US-funded and controlled Information Superhighway (blah blah blah) does make its way into every household.

I guess that we should wait until this UK-based information technology company that no one's ever heard of because it doesn't deal in MSDOS, is able to stand on its own two feet before we sell it off to someone else. And if it can't then, hell, what have we lost? Nothing to worry about, let's go back to sleep.

Contact Tim Smith on gashead@cix.compulink.co.uk and timbo@gashead.demon.co.uk

The opinions expressed in The Tim Smith Column are not necessarily those of Amiga Format.


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