Golf Portable: Small by design - big in business

Goupil - or more properly Societé de Micro-informatique et Telecommunications (SMT) Goupil - was a French company that had been established in 1979 and 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 competition like Compaq and Olivetti, which had much bigger marketing budgets[source: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/16195/Goupil-Golf-286-10-HD40/]. 

After budget cuts led to the collapse of its core government market in the latter half of the 1980s, it started progressively inflating its sales figures and eventually became the subject of a criminal investigation in 1991, after it declared bankruptcy with debts of 700 million Francs[source: https://www.lesechos.fr/1991/07/la-cob-transmet-le-dossier-smt-goupil-a-la-justice-950724], which is about [[70|1991]] million in [[now]].

There had been some hints of the problems ahead when a press release suggesting that Goupil was "doing fine, thank you" was reported on by Guy Kewney in May 1986's PCW.

It had been taken by some parts of the press to mean more than just general indifference, which led SMT to retort:

~"False and damaging information concerning SMT's 1985 results and prospects for 1986 has recently been published in the computer trade press".

It went on to report that it had already sold 200 of its new 80186-based machines, which wasn't many, but then the '186 wasn't especially compatible with the wider IBM PC market.

Kewney then referred to what has become known as the Streisand Effect when he concluded:

~"The really sad thing is: I'd never have read these 'false and damaging' reports until SMT told me about them[source: Silence is Golden, Newsprint, PCW, May 1986, p. 84]".

The Goupil Golf of the advert was a not-quite-laptop portable machine based around a 10MHz Intel 80286, with 640K RAM, a hard disk and just two expansion slots, and these were only for half-length expansion cards.

It actually reviewed very well, with Simon Jones writing in a benchtest of the machine in January 1988's PCW 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 that, the Golf comes top of my shortlist for the 'Transportable of the Year' award.[source: Goupil Golf Benchtest, Simon Jones, PCW, January 1988, p. 134]".

[picture: Goupil_golf_percw_apr90.webp|An advert for the Golf - now with the option of a 386SX processor - from PCW, April 1990]

Goupil was still advertising the Golf a year later, but with an additional model containing Intel's latest 80386SX processor - a version of the regular 386 but with a cut-down 16-bit data bus, making it cheaper to build around but slower than its bigger sibling.

The Golf could also support an optional maths co-processor, the 80387, which would be just about the last time that this was a feature, as Intel effectively rolled in better floating-point maths into its next processor - the 80486.

When it first launched in the UK, the Golf retailed for £3,475, which is about [[3475|1989]] in [[now]].


