95% off the cost of financial modelling

Although this advert is for software and not a microcomputer, it does come from Applied Computer Techniques (ACT) of Birmingham - a company that had been importing Computhink's MiniMax and selling it as the ACT Series 800.

However, that's not really the noteworthy bit. The noteworthy bit is that ACT was calling its software division ACT Microsoft, and it appears to be nothing to do with the Redmond-based company of the same name.

It's hard to think that ACT wasn't aware of the other Microsoft in the US, as its BASIC was being used in most micros of the day. However, the other Microsoft was only just on the cusp of becoming famous for its MS-DOS, and Windows was still years away.

So perhaps ACT though that a simple compound word made from the roots of microcomputer and software was fair game, with adverts for ACT Microsoft running in PRAC for several months in 1981.

At least perhaps until the other Microsoft's legal team got wind of it.

The software package itself was called Micromodeller and had been developed in the UK and the US by the software house Intelligence UK Ltd.

At £425 for the package, or around [[425|1981]] in [[now]], PRAC reckoned that it represented a "fraction of the yearly bureaux fees a comparable facility would cost" - perhaps a nod to ACT's founding as a mainframe bureau services company.

These were clearly so expensive that even at £4,000 ([[4000|1981]]) for a complete system including the Apple II to run it on, it was still a bargain and "everyone in a company needing the facility could have a personal system".

ACT, which was already the distributor of the spreadhseet VisiCalc, was obviously hoping that this new package would achieve the same success, with David Low, managing director of ACT, adding:

~"Each year, two or three software packages of real significance emerge - Micromodeller is one of these".