A Wordsmith Pure and Simple

By Thomas McCarroll/New York

"Using a computer to write letters," says Ronald Coleman, a Mount Vernon, Ohio, maker of glass sculpture, "is like using a cannon to hunt rabbits." That may be so, but an awful lot of Americans are still taking that high- caliber approach to communication. An estimated 7.1 million personal computers were sold in the U.S. last year, almost every one capable of diverse tasks that range from preparing income-tax returns to managing the inventory of a small-to-medium-size business. Yet word-processing tasks, including the laborious business of writing and editing letters, lists and other manuscripts, account for at least 75% of all personal-computer use and 65% of annual software sales.

Now, after little more than a year of exposure, a less complicated and ! cheaper kind of computer gadgetry is starting to carve a niche in the word- processing market. Known as personal writers, the novel instruments look much like their personal-computer rivals, complete with keyboard and video- display monitors. Like personal computers, the new products are powered by semiconductor chips and use floppy disks that can store up to 140 pages of text. The difference is that the new machines cannot do such high-tech jobs as number-crunching calculation and communication with other computers. Instead, the personal writers perform only routine editing and writing tasks -- at a stripped-down price of around $800, vs. more than $1,500 for a typical IBM PC.

Personal writers were introduced to the U.S. market last year by Magnavox, a division of North American Philips, and by Smith-Corona, a unit of SCM. These machines soon had competitors made by Amstrad, Panasonic and Canon. About 100,000 of the instruments were sold in 1986 for a total of about $70 million, mainly to small-business professionals, students and the work-at-home market. Overall U.S. sales figures are expected to reach 200,000 this year and 1 million by 1990. Total value of the personal-writer market by that time: an estimated $800 million.

One of the main selling points of the new machines is simplicity. All models currently on sale are equipped with built-in programming to spare customers the trouble of learning how to use separate commercial word- processing software. The operating instructions are minimal: with a few simple commands, sentences and paragraphs can be switched around or type styles changed on the display screens.

Paradoxically enough, the price of the personal writers is still too high to attract the occasional wordsmith. Predicts Andy Bose, an analyst at the Manhattan-based Link Resources market-research firm: "Personal writers are not going to become mass-market items until prices drop to around $400." But that may not take long. Amstrad recently reduced the price of its model from $799 to $499, and Magnavox is currently offering a $200 rebate on purchases of its $700 Videowriter. If personal writers prove to be like other new products in the fast-paced consumer electronics industry, prices will continue to drop drastically. Then the specialized writing machine may give both computers and typewriters a run for their money.