Name: The Monorail: $999 All-In-One Windows PC from 1996!
Uploaded: 2020-05-08T18:25:08.000Z
Duration: 16 min
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And today we're headed back to the '90s with this boxy beast right here: the Monorail

PC, an all-in-one desktop computer that first hit the market in November of 1996.

Despite its bulky metal case making it look like a piece of industrial equipment, the

Monorail was a low-cost desktop PC intended for first-time computer users.

And for a short period in time they were the new hotness, with Monorail being the 14th

leading manufacturer of desktop PCs, growing at a rate of 50% per quarter, and looking

Unfortunately for them that didn't happen, but this machine is still a notable footnote

The first reason is its unprecedented design, packing a Pentium compatible motherboard,

desktop-sized CD-ROM, floppy drive, and hard drive,

and a color LCD monitor all into one unit.

The second thing setting it apart was pricing, with the original Model 7245 first going on

At the time, that was a magic number for a PC with a monitor included.

So the Monorail was not only one of the cheapest complete systems around, but it was perhaps

the first all-in-one desktop with a built-in LCD, predating computers

like the Compaq Presario 3020 by nearly a full year.

And obviously, before Apple's iMac G5 by a good eight years, that didn't arrive until 2004.

Of course the Monorail is a way chonkier lil guy by comparison,

Adjustable LCD screen up front, optical drive bay on the side,

I/O section with all your ports around back.

Even its “sealed case” maintenance philosophy is very Apple-esque,

with Monorail intending it to only be upgraded by the manufacturer,

voiding the warranty if you opened the case yourself.

Something many tech reviewers back then did not appreciate, despite Monorail's efforts

to make upgrades as painless as possible.

was dead-set on forging a new path in the personal computer business.

The company was founded in 1995 by Doug Johns, formerly the senior vice president of Compaq's

PC division, basing Monorail in the city of Marietta, Georgia just outside Atlanta.

At the time, 30 million American households had never owned a computer, and Johns saw

things like pricing, distribution, and maintenance as barriers to entry.

So he invested $2 million into Monorail in 1995, with several talented folks helping

co-found the company, each coming from the likes of Compaq, IBM, and Oracle.

Pricing was one of the biggest initial hurdles, since the main goal was to sell a sub-$1000 computer.

Reducing overhead costs was key, and this was accomplished

Monorail designed their PCs in-house and received orders by telephone, but all manufacturing,

logistics, repairs, and financials were handled by outside partners.

An original equipment manufacturer took care of building the machines, at first being

Phelps Technologies out of Kansas City, Missouri.

Federal Express would handle all the shipping and handling of the machines once they were

CompUSA was Monorail's sole retail partner, initially, so they took care of regional advertising

And Suntrust Banks handled company finances,

acting as Monorail's accounts receivable department.

Even the machines themselves were designed around the idea of using third party options.

FedEx told Monorail that the ideal dimensions for a package

weighing between 15 and 25 pounds was 19”x19”x9.5” inches.

Too small to fit both a monitor and a PC, which is why Monorail decided to use a dual

scan laptop LCD panel integrated into the case.

The rest of the components were on the lower end as well,

with a 75 megahertz Pentium-class AMD CPU, 16 megabytes of RAM,

a 1 gigabyte hard drive, 4x CD-ROM, and a 33.6 Kbps FAX/modem.

Nothing mind-blowing, but Monorail was keen to push its planned upgrade path, offering

faster processors and up to 80 megs of RAM

at prices they claimed were comparable to doing it yourself.

They recommended holding onto the shipping box for this, so you could simply drop off

your Monorail with FedEx, they'd deliver it to the original manufacturer for upgrades,

As for the name “Monorail,” you might be wondering: what kinda name is Monorail anyway?

Well, like almost everything else at the company, the name was outsourced.

Another company called Name Lab was tasked with the job, and the mandate was to come

up with a friendly name that avoided overused computer company words

Apparently “Monorail” fit the bill, despite it not really having much in the way of meaning.

It did at least lead to the company mascot, Monorail Mo, the Monorail system conductor.

Anyway, despite their lofty ambitions and positive press,

Monorail had a bit of a rough go of it at first.

Their OEM, Phelps, went bankrupt so they had to move manufacturing to Mitac and SCI Systems,

certain retail partners were marking up the price above $1000, critics weren't happy

with the stingy warranty and upgrades, and competitors were slashing prices to get their

By 1998 Monorail decided to move away from all-in-ones and start focusing on boring white

box towers aimed at business users, with machines like the NPC 5000 and 7000 series

You know what else hit shelves in late '98?

eMachines, with their sub-$500 PCs using almost

the exact same specs as those from Monorail, but at prices hundreds of dollars less.

The race to the bottom was finally bottoming out and Monorail wasn't fully prepared.

Pulling out of the PC market in the year 2000 and rebranding as Monorail E-Solutions, briefly

becoming a business decision-making company before fizzling out in 2002.

But that was then and this is now, and we've got ourselves this lovely boxed example of

This was introduced in early '97 at a price of $1,299, with upgrades to the CPU, hard

drive, video RAM, and CD-ROM drive over the original Monorail.

The manual and the mouse were long gone by the time I got this, but it does have the

original keyboard as well as this quick setup poster

that kinda reminds me of a board game somehow.

And there's our friend Mo again, guiding us through the process of plugging things

in, a quaint reminder of how fresh the PC experience still was to many folks in 1996.

But yeah, there's really nothing to it: just plug in the keyboard, a mouse, and a

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The Monorail: $999 All-In-One Windows PC from 1996!

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