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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Pedrazzini
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