Jack Tramiel flew into London last week to put the finishing touches to the Great Atari Facelift. Through his skilled surgeon's art, the dowdy, frumpish and sickening corporation has been transformed into a vivacious debutante - all that remains is its coming out party.

This is due to take place in January when Atari will flood the US Consumer Electronics Show with new machines and peripherals.

There will be four new families, covering games consoles, 8-bit micros, 16-bit systems for about £300, and in April, 32-bit workstations for less than £1,000. The revamp of the company will be confirmed by the revamping of its products - even the 800XL is due for a facelift.

The 32-bit systems, built around Nat Semi's 32032, will be designed for professional users. "We sell computers to people who know computers," said Tramiel.

Tramiel spoke in detail about the 16-bit machines. They'll have a proprietary Operating System developed jointly by Atari and Digital Research, with DR's GEM software (issue 89) in the forefront. "I do not compete with IBM," Tramiel declared. He dismissed Apple's Macintosh as a system suitable for boutique owers, but a £300 Mac-lookalike should bring Atari up against almost everybody.

The operating system won't be Apple or IBM-compatible, and Tramiel admitted that there won't be many applications immediately. That doesn't seem to worry him. Atari generally gives the impression that there isn't a cloud on the horizon these days.

Even the financial outlook is rosy. Tramiel expects Atari to turn over $1 billion next year. It is breaking even at the moment, he said, and was having no difficulty raising extra cash. "You have to deal with investors who know the business," he said.

To games console users he gave a commitment that Atari was staying in that business, and on the subject of Atarisoft he commented: "It's healthy and alive, and we've added new products." These include software and peripherals.