New Adler Alphatronic: Now £1550 can buy you a lot of computer

Here's an advert for the new Alphatronic from Triumph-Adler of West Germany - one of several traditional office equipment manufacturers, like [@Olivetti] and [@Olympia], to enter the new-ish microcomputer market.

Triumph-Adler, or Adler as it seemed to be commonly known, was actually owned by Volkswagen Group, but had not "had an easy ride of late", according to PRAC. 

Quoting an article in October 1981's The Economist, it appeared that parent company VW had frittered away $3 billion in a "madcap foray into office equipment", and that VW had "bungled its new electronics business" because it didn't understand the computer market.

VW had taken over Adler in 1979, with PRAC reporting that "the office-equipment company has been in trouble ever since[source: "Alphatronic", PRAC, February 1982, p. 56]".

Nominally launched in the UK in early 1981 - at around the time of this advert - PRAC didn't actually review it until February of the following year, when it was still calling it "one of the latest [micros] to join to flood".

As such, it's possible that either it did so poorly that it was re-launched after it had been forgotten, or manufacturing or technical issues caused a delay to its shipping. PRAC even suggested that "it had not been the stunning success it should have been".

In fact, when PRAC tried to take apart its review machine, it noticed a significant amount of metal foil used for electrical screening as well as the presence of a "Heath-Robinson" earthing bar near the video socket with the screen of the printer cable attached to it - perhaps signs of late changes to fix interference issues.


Either way, it's a fairly standard machine with 48K RAM, but which ran CP/M on an Intel 8085A processor, rather than the more usual Z80.

Because of this, the machine came with pre-supplied software including the word processor Lexicom, written by British software house Microtrend. 

Although PRAC considered this package as good, and better than WordPro on the Commodore PET, it still pointed that few, if any, of the Alphatronic's programs were portable.

This wasn't necessarily a problem as it seemed like the machine was aimed at the "small-business owner who likes to work at home", right down to the bundled software, Sanyo monitor and optional printer - very much making it a precursor to Amstrad's [=pcw-1985-11_002_pcw8256|PC​W 8256].

The review in February 1982's edition, which suggested that for the price it was a good, but not outstanding, hard-working machine, concluded:

~"The Alphatronic computer works as well as any other in its field, even if it is uninspiring. The Alphatronic is a good buy for the first-time computer user; however competition is hot. I am afraid I can do nothing but damn the Alphatronic with faint praise, which is a pity because it deserves better".

The P1 model with monitor retailed for £1,550 plus VAT, or around [[1780|1981]] in [[now]] money, whilst the P2, with two disk drives, monitor and a printer retailed for £2,345 + VAT, which is [[2700|1981]] now. 

Triumph-Adler updated the Alphatronic range with the [=pcw_1983-02-00_021_ta|P3], released towards the end of 1982.