Computers: Acorn seeks slice of the action: Britain's specialist education supplier hopes a new range of PC-capable machines will lead it into new markets. Nigel Willmott reports

AFTER WIDGITS in beer cans, the first flip-top computer: Acorn, Britain's small but perfectly formed personal computer manufacturer, hopes to continue its battle with the Goliaths of the IT industry with the ultimate in modular pick 'n' mix computer systems.

You want an standard Acorn, just switch on the company's new Risc PC. You want a PC-compatible, plug in a small add-on printed circuit board; you want seven CD-rom drives, stack 'em up. Not only does the screw-less case open up easily with a flick on a couple of fasteners, but the case is designed as a 'slice' which can be added on top of another 'slice'. A single system can grow up to seven layers, each slice able to take a mixture of hard disks, CD-rom drives and add-on processor cards - fax modem cards, peripheral control cards for the likes of scanners and other devices.

With the launch, seven years ago, of its Archimedes computer, Acorn pioneered a range of machines based on its own microprocessor chips which differed from those produced by Intel (which lie at the heart of the IBM PC and compatibles) and Motorola (upon which Apple's computers are based). The Archimedes uses a 'Risc' chip - reduced instruction set computing - which is technically more efficient, but which was not compatible with either of the two de facto industry standards. Now the company is mounting its bid to enter the mainstream while retaining the benefits of the Risc technology.

Acorn's new Risc PC may not quite be an object of desire in itself, but design has certainly come a long way from the company's old BBC microcomputers, whose design seemed inspired by the Centurion tank. The new system casing is tough enough to survive in the primary and secondary schools which form Acorn's core market. It is made of a the same mixture of plastic and carbon fibres used in riot shields.

Given Acorn's position in the education market, it is inevitable our children will soon be getting to grips with the Risc PC. Are they getting something we grown ups should know about and will it save Acorn from being slowly strangled by the duckweed-like expansion of Microsoft and Intel-based PCs?

Technically it is certainly on course. Acorn took Apple to task last month for claiming to have blazed the way into 32-bit Risc computing. That format increasingly looks like the way all the personal computers are developing, including the PC.

The Acorn Archimedes was the first 32-bit Risc personal computer, and the company has now sold some 300,000 32-bit Risc machines. After Apple launched the first PowerMac machine - which is also Risc based - with a global beanfeast in New York, Acorn tried to redress the balance this week by inviting small groups of journalists to offices on an industrial estate in White City.

Acorn has a better solution to running IBM-PC software on non- IBM style machines than using a software emulation program as the PowerMac does. Acorn has been doing that for years with its PC Emulator program. But to run PC Windows programs, which dominate the software market, on a non-native machine, demands huge amounts of processing power and therefore main memory, and therefore cost.

Acorn machines store their operating system in a rom (read only memory) chip, saving on main memory (ram), so they can operate very powerfully with much less ram - and cost - even when running PC Windows programs.

Users can 'drag and drop' items of text, graphics or full-colour pictures from a PC program into an Acorn program, giving an incentive to users to keep on using the Acorn part of the system.

However, the problem for Acorn is to get the the masses who are not teachers or worthy middle-class parents who have bought machines on educational grounds - the kids soon find out they are first-class games machines with excellent graphics and stereo sound - to sample the machines.

And that comes down to marketing and marketing clout. A company that employs 240 people in Cambridge and turns over pounds 50m a year is not a minnow in the marketplace, it barely counts as plankton. It has done well to keep its educational niche and the launch of PC- capable machines should help to quieten those who say that yes, Acorn is user friendly, but in the real world, people use PCs. It has also found growing niches in desk top publishing, through a link with A B Dick, the printing equipment manufacturer, and in video editing.

But if it is to survive and grow, Acorn needs to break into the consumer market and that means not just offering technical capabilities and the ability to add CD-rom drives and fax modems. The new consumer wants to buy a box, set it up and go with all the latest multimedia functions included and installed - until recently, Acorn's basic software did not even include a spreadsheet. Acorn claims the modularity of the Risc PC allows it to configure up to 15,000 different systems. But the only one that will count is the one that delivers what the consumer wants.

Jargon buster

Formats: The personal computer market is dominated by the PC- compatible 'format' or type of computer. These are based on Intel processing chips and Microsoft's Dos and Windows operating systems. There are many suppliers of this type of computer, from IBM, which originated it, to large 'clone' makers like Compaq and Dell, to small system builders. All PC programs should run on any of these machines.

The main non-PC format is Apple's Macintosh, based on processor chips from Motorola and Apple's own operating system. These will not run PC programs, just as PCs will not run Apple software. But the dominance of PC software in the market has forced Apple to develop the PowerMac, which will run both formats.

Acorn, which uses chips it has developed itself and its own operating system, is bidding to stay in the race by launching a machine which will run PC software as well as its own.

Risc: Reduced instruction set computing is based on processing chips which are designed so they can process a relatively small set of instructions very quickly. This is more efficient for all but highly complex instructions.