Epson Advert - January 1987

This is yet another entry in the pantheon of almost-identical beige boxes that came to define the industry for years.

It's the hard-disk-based update of Epson's previous and unimaginatively-named Epson PC, a machine which in a quest for ultimate compatibility with the IBM even went as far as to use the same 8/16-bit Intel 8088 processor at the same pedestrian 4.77MHz clock speed, at a time when competitors were shipping 6 or even 10MHz machines, such as Olivetti's M24.

Despite that, it reviewed well in February 1986's Personal Computer World, with Peter Bright writing:

"At first sight the new Epson PC doesn't look like an IBM PC clone at all: it's too well designed. The Epson PC has two great assets: the way it looks and its price. For an IBM PC clone it's positively pretty. It is compact, looks well made and has a certain designer flair not found on other PC clones. Overall the Epson PC is the best cheap IBM clone I can think of. It's not very fast and could run out of expansion slots, but it is well designed and put together, and - a prime consideration - it is very cheap."^[1]

Epson was quite late to the IBM clone party when it launched its original PC at the end of 1985 - over four years after the original IBM 5150 - and it was into a market where it was said that only Compaq, Olivetti, and obviously IBM, were doing any decent business, with the remainder of sales made up with unremarkable budget machines from Taiwan.

IBM compatibles either tended to trade on price - which wasn't difficult compared to IBM - or features. The Epson was clearly trading on its low price, which put it up against Commodore's PC, one of the few other PCs from a major manufacturer in the same market segment. However, the Commodore appeared to be "cheap and nasty and showed every sign of being built to a price".

Unfortunately for Epson, the advert copywriter over-stretches the "PC Plod" metaphor, in particular by not actually understanding some of the references quoted. Best mis-quote ever: "it can run them over three times faster" (Hello, hello, hello)".

This of course should be "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello", normally followed by "what's all this then?" in the style of Dixon of Dock Green and every other TV copper, rozzer, Old Bill or polizei of the 70s and 80s.