University Cuts Prices Of Macintosh by $300

Members of the Harvard Community, as well as members of the other 22 schools in the Apple University Consortium can purchase the Apple Macintosh at price, even lower than original cut rate price.

In an attempt to bolster traditionally slow post-Christmas, sales. Apple Computer Inc. has dropped the Macintosh prices up to $300 to $1780 and $2330--according to officials at the Harvard Technology Product Center.

The sale on the bundled Macintoshes, which include external disk drives and ImageWriter printers, began in late January and runs until March 31.

Officials at Apple refused to comment on whether the price decrease was related to a lower than expected demand for the Macintosh, as some industry sources have said. "Apple does not discuss pricing policy publicly," said Barbara Krause, manager of corporate press relations at Apple.

In the past, Apple has made Macintoshes at substantially reduced prices available to students and affiliates of the 23 universities comprising the Apple University Consortium.

"People are really taking advantage of the bundle," said Connie Towler, manager of Harvard's Technology Product Center. "We've sold a significant number of Macintoshes."

Christopher D. Carroll '86, chairman of the technical committee of the Harvard Computer Society said that be felt the "fantastic price" would lead "some people to buy Macintoshes instead of IBM or DIO.

"I think that while more people will buy Macintoshes said Towler, "the people who would have bought IBM before will still IBM because they have different needs."

"I was intending to buy just the Macintosh with the external disk drive '88, "but when I called the Technology Product Center I was told that I could get the same package with a printer for only about $170 more, so I got that too."

Some students, however, were not as pleased with the sale. Deborah I Copaken '88, who bought a Macintosh before the price cut, said. "I'm mad. I'm very made. I guess that's great for the people buying Macintoshes now, but I definitely needed mine for Expos this fall."

In addition to the Macintosh, the Technology Product Center also sells computers at discount prices from IBM and DEC, and is currently offering a series of seven seminars designed for novice computer users, according to Towler.

The $35 to $75 seminars, which began February 11 and run through April 11. range from basic introductory courses to courses on spreadsheets, word processing, and data bases.