Citizen Europe is emphasising its move away from printers with the launch of several new products that will be available from the end of April. The Which Computer? Show is to host the first UK showing of Pro PC range of personal computers, which are bought OEM from Normerel SA, now the OEM arm of SMT Goupil SA. The company says that its new machines, actually available in France, Finland, and Italy since last year, will undercut offerings from Compaq, and match those of Tandon and Tulip. There are three basic configurations, one based on the 80286, and two on the 80386. The Pro 286 is available in three versions, and they all operate at 12.5MHz with a basic memory of 640Kb expandable to 2.64Mb. Each computer has a 3.5 SCSI hard disk with a capacity between 20Mb and 40Mb. The Pro 286-FF has a dual 3.5 floppy disk, the 286-20 has a single 3.5 disk, and the 286-40 has a 40Mb hard disk. Prices start at UKP1,500, and go up to UKP1,645 and UKP1,810. The Citizen Pro 386SX has a 16MHz Intel 80386SX processor, and includes two models. Both machines have a 1Mb basic memory that is expandable to 4Mb via a system board. There are two hard disks of 40Mb and 80Mb, and the machines cost UKP2,285 or UKP2,600. Citizen’s top of the range Pro 386 series is also based on the 80386 chip operating at 20MHz. The Pro 386-40 has a 40Mb hard disk and costs UKP2,895, and the 386-80 is UKP3,275. All machines carry a two year warranty, which includes on-site maintenance during the first year.

Xerox engine

Citizen has also launched a new 14 colour monitor, the CCN 104, and two new printers. The monitor is compatible with the PS/2, IBM AT and XTs, and is being promoted as an alternative to IBM’s 8514 colour monitor. It is being distributed with the ProCard 816 graphics card which uses the Tseng Labs ET4000 chip and comes with 1Mb on-board video memory. With a 1,024 by 768 pixel resolution, up to 256 colours can be accessed at one time, and the monitor uses Sony’s 14 Black Trinitron tube. The ProCard 816 costs UKP380, and the ProCM 14i is UKP650, also with a two year warranty. Despite the slowdown in the 9-pin printer market, Citizen reckons there’s enough demand to justify a new product called the Swift 9. The printer is compatible with Epson’s FX850 and IBM’s Proprinter III. It costs UKP270 and has a top speed of 213 characters per second in high-speed draft, 160 characters in standard draft, and 40 characters per second in nearly letter quality. It incorporates the Sans Serif, Courier, and Times Roman fonts, and has a graphics capability. The Swift 9 has a Centronics-style parallel interface, optional RS232C serial interface , and an 8Kb buffer. There are two optional sheetfeeds for automatic or semi-automatic operations, which cost UKP84 or UKP40, and an optional colour kit is UKP38. The company has also added to its ProLaser range with the ProLaser 12, hailed as the flagship product. It is an 11 page per minute laser printer with a Xerox engine – Citizen and Xerox have recently signed a three-year OEM agreement – and has an optional XScript facility. The ProLaser 12 has 11 resident Hewlett-Packard compatible fonts and a number of optional font cards. The 512Kb memory can expand to 5Mb, and both parallel and serial interfaces are standard, with an optional port sharing device to be available in the near future. The ProLaser 12 costs UKP2,100, and the XScript option is UKP800. Citizen says that the Which? show will also see the launch of a new 1 20Mb floppy disk drive that will probably cost four to five times the a standard 20Mb hard disk. Although Citizen is buying these machines in, it manufactures the SLT and SLT/286 laptops for Compaq Computer Corp back in Japan (CI No 1,301).