Word: tramiel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Jack Tramiel: Survivor's Victory
...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...
...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...
...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...