Dealers, we'll help you out of the microcomputer jungle

In the days before visual accessibility guidelines existed, and aimed more at potential dealers than the general public, this advert for Altos is actually placed by Microtex of Windsor, which was importing Altos's range of micros and was looking for a network of re-sellers.

The Altos model shown isn't specified, and it doesn't look like the previous ACS8000 Sun Series micro which the company had been selling since at least 1978, although the specification is the same: a 64K Z80A-based machine with twin floppy disk drives, retailing for £2,200 - or about [[2200|1981]] in [[now]].

The advert does also highlight that Altos was about to release a 16-bit machine, which could run CP/M-86, OASIS-86 or Unix, and that according to a survey published by Datapro Research Corporation in 1981, 100% of Altos users said they would recommend the company to other computer users.

Apart from the fact that the text is almost impossible to read over the leafy background, the advert is also yet another featuring the jungle or swamp metaphor, not unlike Commodore's [=adve_028|swamp], Ithaca InterSystems [=adve_050|wild garden], [=pcw_1983-10-00_016_comart|Comart's] bubbling cess-pit, or Sharp's 1981 advert for its MZ-80, featuring a chameleon also in the "microcomputer jungle".
