The 1990 Design Award, the top accolade in the UK, has gone to Microwriter Systems Plc for its miniature word processor and electronic Filofax. The Agenda pocket organiser measures 0.75 by 7 by 3, and uses only five keys to generate the entire alphabet. Designed in the UK and manufactured by Printed Circuits International in Singapore, it contains a diary and personal database, a word processor that can be used with office-based computers, and it communicates with any IBM-compatible micro or Apple Mac. The internal memory is either 32Kb or 64Kb, and this can be expanded by the addition of memory expansion cards. The Agenda Microwriter can hardly be described as an overnight success since it’s been around in one form or another since 1979. It was the brainchild of Cy Enfield who founded Microwriter Ltd in 1978 with Sir Mark Weinberg, co-founder of Hambro Life Assurance. Weinberg subscribed UKP715,438 for shares in the infant company, and has subsequently put up at least another UKP100,000 for the successor, Microwriter Systems Plc. The last was formed under the aegis of the Business Expansion Scheme in 1988 with share capital of UKP850,000 after the private circulation of the prospectus, and a minimum individual investment of UKP2,500. The original company had a very sticky time and reached an all time high in 1983 when it lost UKP526,000 on sales of UKP738,000. Problems arose largely because the precursor to Agenda was very limited, it didn’t have word processing capabilities and was a crude-looking machine. The main difficulty in re-designing Microwriter was to incorporate more functions but to keep it as small as possible. Agenda not only offers the original Microwriter five key board – you push the keys in different directions to get the full alphabet which is said to be very easy to learn, but conventional alphanumeric and function keys. The range of word processing text commands include tabs, column and page headers, justify and page throw, word-wrap, and carriage return. Microwriter Systems says that the three distinct markets for Agenda are the corporate sector, individuals, and companies using it in conjunction with computers. At the end of this month a programmming language and basic compiler will be added to Agenda, so that anyone who can program in C will be able to programme the portable. The company says that 10,000 machines were shipped by December 1989, and estimates that end-user sales are around the 7,000 mark. Agenda costs UKP200, but a typical sale with memory expansion cards and peripherals comes out at nearer UKP250. – Janice McGinn
