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There is no feistier figure in the personal computer business than Jack Tramiel, 54, president of Commodore International, whose PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) computer is the largest seller in Europe and one of the big four in the U.S. along with Apple, Radio Shack and IBM. Unwilling to be trammeled by cheaper imports, he called together investors a few years ago and said, "Gentlemen, we must build and sell a color computer for under $300." When the investors balked, Tramiel pounded the table and said that if they did not produce such a machine, the Japanese would. The result of that Tramiel browbeating is Commodore's VIC 20 (list price: $299, but avail able for as little as $170), one of the most widely sold computers ever built.
The dynamo behind the little machine is something of a mighty mite himself. Short (5 ft. 4 in.) and stocky, the Polish-born Tramiel is hot-tempered, keeps his executive echelons in turmoil, avoids photographers (colleagues have dubbed him "the Howard Hughes of computer dom") and calls himself a "graduate survivor." During World War II he was sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz. After Soviet troops liberated the death camp, he worked for the U.S. Army repairing type writers. Then he went into business on his own, eventually getting into the manufacture of pocket calculators.
Tramiel believes in depending on as few outside suppliers as possible. Commodore makes its own chips to avoid being caught in a supply or pricing crunch. A ferocious competitor, Tramiel once splashed full-page ads in major newspapers across the U.S. that proclaimed, COMMODORE ATE THE APPLE. For several years, to capture the important education market, he offered schools two PETs for the price of one.
In September the Norristown, Penn., firm brought out its latest small computer, the Commodore 64. It lists at $595, less than half the price of the Apple II Plus, but comes with a third more memory.
Tramiel believes he has still more aces up his sleeve. At January's big consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, Commodore plans to show off a new voice-synthesis device that will enable users of its computers to create speech.
Clive Sinclair: Small Is Beautiful
Ever since he was a youngster in England, Clive Sinclair, 42, has had big thoughts about little things. At twelve, he built small mechanical calculators. At 22, after a brief stint as a science writer and editor specializing in home electronics, Sinclair and his wife Anne set up a mail order house selling transistors and later kits for miniradios no bigger than match boxes. In the 1970s he made one of the earliest pocket calculators with advanced mathematical functions, designed a pioneering, inexpensive digital wristwatch, and introduced a tiny TV with a 2-in. screen. Ahead of their time, none survived very long.
But the balding, bearded and largely self-taught Sinclair (he passed up the uni versity) kept thinking small. In 1980 he introduced the world's littlest and cheapest personal computer, the Sinclair ZX80. Last September a more sophisticated version of the ZX80 made its debut in the U.S. as the Timex Sinclair 1000 (list price: $99). Since then, the 12-oz. units have been in a race with Commodore for top spot in worldwide computer sales.