Surralan
He is actually a below average lucky businessman but profited immensely from the short term boom in property. Now that has fallen on its arse it's a miracle he isn't signing on.
Sir Alan Sugar hits eject button at Viglen
Sir Alan Sugar resigned as chairman at Viglen on 1 July, hard on the heels of his appointment as the government’s Enterprise Champion, a Companies House document has revealed. He became a director of the UK computer maker in 2002, after buying it back in the 1990s. However, Sugar's sudden decision to hang up his boots at …
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Monday 6th July 2009 16:03 GMT Rob Beard
Sinclair
Okay, my hopes of the Sinclair Loki* machine being released are now dashed**, guess that's not going to happen now they have dissolved Sinclair Computers Ltd.
Does that mean though that someone else can start up Sinclair Computers Limited and sell computers?
Mine's the one with the copy of Crash and stack of 3" disks in the pocket.
Rob (actually more of an Atari ST fanboi)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(computer)
** Hey if the Amiga fanboi's can keep hoping for the Amiga's second coming then I'm sure as heck going to hope for the release of the Loki system.
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Monday 6th July 2009 20:03 GMT LesB
I remember Viglen....
They used to make pretty solid, generally reliable office PCs and (shock!) had decent support. All went a bit wrong after a while. It was the support that went first - instead of the old method (techie[1] places call, they say "engineer tomorrow?"), they introudced the "try another three sets of NT4 startup disks on that machine that won't boot, and err, dunno what to do next" method. Cheaper in the short run, bur ensured I never bought another computer from them...
I can't *quite* recall if this happened after Mr Sugar bought the company. I just prefer to think it happened in that order.
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Monday 6th July 2009 20:03 GMT Andy 70
Sinclair Loki?
if you want Loki hardware, you'd best be looking at the SAM coupe' as that's want got the benefit of the designers ideas, then they were on the Atari Jaguar program after the abortive and mysterious Janus system... didn't the Jag have a custom chip named Janus?...
PH cos her chesticle hardware is MIA too.
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 09:49 GMT Grease Monkey
Viglen Were Good, Once
Viglem produced pretty solid, reliable, workmanlike kit once upon a time and the support was good too. Then they went downhill rapidly in both departments. I'm sure that nobody would suggest that this was in any way related to Sugar buying the company and imposing the same ideals on it as he had previously employed at Amstrad.
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 11:40 GMT Peter Gathercole
Viglen? A PC manufacturer?
If I remember correctly, they started by skinning TEAC bare 5.25 floppy drives in a plastic sleeve case, with appropriate wires and a 40/80 track switch, for BBC Micros. Not a PC product in sight then.
I've still got one somewhere, and it (and the BBC Micro) still worked last time I tried it (but the floppiess themselves are pretty patchy). Think I paid £199 for it, plus the cost of the 8271 disk controller kit and DFS ROM. Seemed cheap at the time, and it probably was, bearing in mind how many people bought them!
If you look, there is a battered copy of the BBC Advanced User Guide in the inside pocket. Thanks.
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 11:40 GMT Lozzyho
I just don't get it
Seriously, can someone explain what the Alan Sugar hero worship is all about?
I mean, the guy has peddled utter tat all his life and his one true skill is how to design something just cheap enough that it fails the day after the warranty runs out.
Now the BBC seem to like the taste of his arse, and the whole country (present company excepted I hope) seems to think he is Britain's equivalent to Gates/Jobs/Ford/whoever.
The man's a total clown with an ego complex and I can't understand why Mr Brown wants him in the government.
Oh wait a minute...
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 19:02 GMT Bo Pedersen
and I thought it was just me
I have always thought he was over hyped, I remember his blatant lies on the governments' national savings adverts the whole "I dont take risks" comment contradicts everything he has done
Many of his companies were high risk technology companies in an extremely competitive market.
Any self respecting business man would never behave like he does.
Not the right man to assist the government in enterprise!
No doubt Tahir Mohsan and Tariq Mohammed formerly of the lovely TIME COLOSSUS MR.PC etc will get a nice government position :)
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 19:02 GMT Bod
Viglen floppy drives
Ah, those were the days :)
Think I had some 'Watford' disc controller though that was non standard but more advanced (double density disc support I think!). Was good except for being incompatible when it came to "backing up" some copy protected discs (yep, they had copy protection even back then).
The expense though for a floppy that would store a few hundred KB !!!!
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Tuesday 7th July 2009 19:02 GMT sleepy
clueless politicians
It just confirms that politicians are clueless about business, and want to believe it's a kind of magic, with Alan Sugar as a well known magician. On the other side, he seems to know the game is up, and is happy to stop being a businessman.
His businesses have been about selling a "mug's eyeful" of apparent features (his words, I believe) at the cheapest possible price. They presume customer ignorance, which is harder to come by in the internet age.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
