Goupil Advert - January 1989
From Personal Computer World
Golf Portable: Small by design - big in business
Goupil was a French company that had been established in 1979, but which mostly produced computers for the French government.
By the mid 1980s, the company was producing IBM compatibles - including a licenced copy of the Kaypro 2000 - but struggled in the face of companies like Compaq and Olivetti, which had much bigger marketing budgets[1].
After its core government market collapsed in the latter half of the 1980s, it started progressively inflating its sales figures and became the subject of a criminal investigation in 1991, after it declared bankruptcy with debts of 700 million Francs[2], which is about £170 million in 2024.
The Goupil Golf was a not-quite-laptop portable machine based around a 10MHz Intel 80286, with 640K RAM, a hard disk and just two expansion slots, but only for short-length expansion cards.
It actually reviewed very well, with Simon Jones writing in a benchtest of the machine in January 1988's Personal Computer World that:
"If you need high-resolution graphics and portability then there aren't many rivals for the Golf. It has the best liquid crystal screen I've seen. The Goupil Golf is certainly a fast machine for its class - you might have to go to a 386-based machined to beat it. With its 40 or 100MB of on-board mass storage and up to 4.64MB of RAM, it is not short of space. On price, it beats the nearest competition by up to £500. The only thing you might want to put on a wish list is a buit-in modem, but you could use one of the two expansion slots for that. Apart from thatm the Golf comes top of my shortlist for the 'Transportable of the Year' award.[3]".
The Golf retailed for £3,475, which is about £10,400 in 2024.
Sources
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