The Strange (and Rare) Videogame Pics Page
OLIVETTI ENVISION

It was a PC, and a Multimedia system and it was an absolute failure... it was the Multimedia PC made by the Italian company Olivetti. One of the last Olivetti project made under Ing. De Benedetti propriety before the company was sold.
Basically a PC (Windows 95 was the OS) in a CDTV-like (or CD-I) box, it was produced in two different versions: one based on the Inter 486 processor and one based on the Intel Pentium processor. It can be connected to a TV set (and a VCR and Hi-Fi stereo), can read Audio CDs, CD-Rom, Kodak Photo CDs and Video CDs, can send faxes, and is Internet-ready.
Major problems: it was overpriced, badly distributed, not completely compatible (something common with a Wintel PC :-), with many (too much...) software bugs, not at all expandable and Pentium versions were marketed too late.



Note the infrared keyboard. The model shown on the pic was the Envision P75, based on a Pentium 75 MHz processor. A Pentiul 133 model was planned but I don't remember if it was really marketed.
I'll soon publish more detailed technical informations.

One of the ads published at the time (1995-1996). Only few units were sold but a lot of uses were so happy with it that are hoping for a future revision of the system. Since Olivetti Computers is now a very troubled company I'm pretty sure we'll never see a similar sistem... at least from them...

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