Olivetti Advert - July 1988

The M290 from Olivetti was another entry in the mass of IBM-compatibles, in this case aiming at the AT with an Intel 80286 CPU running at 12MHz, and 2MB RAM.

Olivetti had been dominant in the early days of the UK's PC-compatible market, but had seen its market share falling since around 1985.

In an apparent bid to resurrect its fortunes, it had - since the late autumn of 1987 - been more agressively releasing updated machines into specific market niches.

The M290 seemed to be aimed at the LAN workstation market, with its small footprint, middling specification and not a lot of space for internal expansion.

Its review in July 1988's Practical Computing was somewhat negative, with Manek Dubash suggesting that it was "unlikely to excite many buyers" and that it was "disappointing". He concluded:

"Like [Olivetti's] M380 the machine is not particularly good value for money. While it is likely to be highly reliable in the long run, its performance is nothing to write home about. The entry-level machine costs £2,191 for the system box alone. Add the keyboard, monochrome screen and MS-DOS and the price goes up to £2,651. Some 80386-based computers cost less. Once again, Olivetti seems to have handed its potential market share to the competition^[1]".

Nice dolphin though.