He is actually a below average lucky businessman but profited immensely from the short term boom in property. Now that has fallen on its arse it's a miracle he isn't signing on.

How the donald can any properly carried out selection process lead to awarding a desktop PC contract to Viglen?

We want your chairman to work for us, scratch scratch scratch... Yup no problem we will pop him in the post?

Having promised to sell 70,000 computers (presumably including software and support infrastructure) at (70,000 / 30000000 =) £428.57 each perhaps he has just done a runner before the shit hits the fan.

Sinclair Computers Ltd?

RIP.

Okay, my hopes of the Sinclair Loki* machine being released are now dashed**, guess that's not going to happen now they have dissolved Sinclair Computers Ltd.

Does that mean though that someone else can start up Sinclair Computers Limited and sell computers?

Mine's the one with the copy of Crash and stack of 3" disks in the pocket.

Rob (actually more of an Atari ST fanboi)

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(computer)

** Hey if the Amiga fanboi's can keep hoping for the Amiga's second coming then I'm sure as heck going to hope for the release of the Loki system.

... because he didn't own it in the first place. He had nothing to do with Viglen until he bought it in the 90s.

They used to make pretty solid, generally reliable office PCs and (shock!) had decent support. All went a bit wrong after a while. It was the support that went first - instead of the old method (techie[1] places call, they say "engineer tomorrow?"), they introudced the "try another three sets of NT4 startup disks on that machine that won't boot, and err, dunno what to do next" method. Cheaper in the short run, bur ensured I never bought another computer from them...

I can't *quite* recall if this happened after Mr Sugar bought the company. I just prefer to think it happened in that order.

if you want Loki hardware, you'd best be looking at the SAM coupe' as that's want got the benefit of the designers ideas, then they were on the Atari Jaguar program after the abortive and mysterious Janus system... didn't the Jag have a custom chip named Janus?...

PH cos her chesticle hardware is MIA too.

AMS started out as a London barrow boy, and made his first business killing by sticking labels marked 'Medicated' on to plain shampoo bottles then doubling the price.

...isn't the whole premise of 'The Apprentice' that the winner gets a job with Sirallun's firm. If he's resigned from everything, where's the winner going to work? Or will a post in government be the prize in future?

never made sense to me then why he bought it.

If I remember correctly, they started by skinning TEAC bare 5.25 floppy drives in a plastic sleeve case, with appropriate wires and a 40/80 track switch, for BBC Micros. Not a PC product in sight then.

I've still got one somewhere, and it (and the BBC Micro) still worked last time I tried it (but the floppiess themselves are pretty patchy). Think I paid £199 for it, plus the cost of the 8271 disk controller kit and DFS ROM. Seemed cheap at the time, and it probably was, bearing in mind how many people bought them!

If you look, there is a battered copy of the BBC Advanced User Guide in the inside pocket. Thanks.

Seriously, can someone explain what the Alan Sugar hero worship is all about?

I mean, the guy has peddled utter tat all his life and his one true skill is how to design something just cheap enough that it fails the day after the warranty runs out.

Now the BBC seem to like the taste of his arse, and the whole country (present company excepted I hope) seems to think he is Britain's equivalent to Gates/Jobs/Ford/whoever.

The man's a total clown with an ego complex and I can't understand why Mr Brown wants him in the government.

Oh wait a minute...

I have always thought he was over hyped, I remember his blatant lies on the governments' national savings adverts the whole "I dont take risks" comment contradicts everything he has done

Many of his companies were high risk technology companies in an extremely competitive market.

Any self respecting business man would never behave like he does.

Not the right man to assist the government in enterprise!

No doubt Tahir Mohsan and Tariq Mohammed formerly of the lovely TIME COLOSSUS MR.PC etc will get a nice government position :)

Siralan lets people know what is really on his mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxi6QDwQyLU

That someone in politics actually retreats from business.

Usually they do the opposite, they are employed for their expertise in the running of Govt, winning contracts and the like... A more obvious conflict of interest I have yet to see.

A Mediocre Sales Twat Resigns, Apathy Descends