Visi On to $7500, three-quarters the cost of the Apple Lisa. The press continued to laud the product, going so far as to claim it represented the end of operating systems. The end-users were less impressed, however, not only due to the high cost of the required hardware, but also the general slowness of the system. In a market where computers were generally used for only one or two tasks, usually business related, the whole purpose of Visi On was seriously diluted. In January 1984, Apple Computer released the Macintosh with much fanfare. Although the Macintosh was seriously lacking software, it was faster, cheaper, and included one feature Visi On lacked: a graphical file manager (the Finder). Although it didn't compete directly with Visi On, which was really a "PC product", it nevertheless demonstrated that a GUI could indeed be fast and relatively inexpensive, both of which Visi On failed to deliver. Adding to the release's problems was Bill Gates, who took a page from VisiCorp's book and announced that their own product, Microsoft Windows, would be available in May 1984. This muddied the waters significantly, notably when he further claimed it would have a similar feature set, didn't require a hard disk, and cost only $250. Windows was released with an even longer delay than Visi On, shipping in November 1985, and was lacking the features that forced Visi On to demand a hard drive. End of life Only eight VisiCorp employees were still developing Visi On when VisiCorp sold the source code to Control Data in mid-1984 to raise cash as it sued Software Arts, while continuing to sell the software itself. Sales were apparently very slow; in February 1985, VisiCorp responded by lowering the price of the basic OS to $99, knowing that anyone purchasing it would also need to buy the applications. These were bundled, all three for $990. This improved the situation somewhat, but sales were still far below projections, and it was certainly not helping the company stave off the problems due to Lotus 1-2-3. Following declining VisiCalc sales and low revenues from Visi On, in November 1985, the company merged with Paladin Software. The new company kept the Paladin name. VisiCorp, and its line of "VisiProducts", were history. Technical information Official system requirements for Visi On were: 512K of User Memory RS-232 Serial Port 5 Megabyte Hard Disk (FAT12 file system ) 1