Sun Microsystems Inc is going retail, and has a $200m reseller pact with Xerox Corp, which will resell Sun systems as the basis of a new family of document processing systems. Distribution agreements have been signed with three US retailers Intelligent Electronics Inc of Exton, Pennsylvania, MicroAge Inc of Tempe, Arizona, and Nynex Business Information Systems Co, White Plains, New York. Sun sees 200 outlets of the three firms selling its gear within a year. Sun accompanied the expected colour Sparcstation (CI No 1,473) with a new release of OpenWindows featuring a three-dimensional version of the Open Look user interface. The new 16 colour Sparcstation is called the IPC but as at the launch of the SLC, no-one was able to tell Computergram what IPC stands for. The workstation, rated at 15.8 MIPS, 1.7 MFLOPS and a Specmark of 10.0, comes with two SBus slots, from 8Mb to 24Mb memory, 207Mb disk, a 3.5 floppy drive and sells for UKP8,000, $10,000.
