As Winston Churchill might have said, “Never in the field of human endeavour have so many rumours been owed to so few machines.” Amidst the widespread 'announcements' of 68020 and 68030-based versions of ST and Amiga, it seems that a laptop version of the ST is being planned for Autumn/Christmas launch.

Bearing the in-house nickname “Stacy” the machine's specification is as yet still the subject of the usual optimistic rumours. What seems certain is that the bottom of the range model will essentially be a 520ST with a flat LCD screen and single floppy disk. It would be impractical to have a mouse on a portable computer, but in the past other manufacturers have got round this by using a trackball (you've seen them on arcade machines) or mini-joystick.

For the bigger models, an internal hard disk drive is thought to be an option. However, bearing in mind that a hard disk for an ST costs two or three times as much as for an IBM PC, and that laptop PC’s with hard disks cost over £2,000, it isn't going to be a cheap option.

Stacy is being developed by Perihelion Hardware of Cambridge - the same company as has done the transputer-based Abaq. We rang them for news, but a they commented, ''If Atari want to tell you anything that's up to them, but we certainly won't.'' Commendably secretive, but at least it seems to confirm they are doing it.

Price? Well, full-size 80 by 25 LCD screens alone cost a fair bit, so it's going to be expensive. It may go down particularly well with musicians who need portable MIDI capabilities.