The momentum behind the Macintosh shows no sign of slackening, as Apple expands its promotions and independent suppliers come up with the goods.

The inducements that Apple is offering potential customers are blatantly commercial and MacBingo could be here before long. But the real goods are coming from elsewhere - Systematics and P&P (formerly Pete and Pam) in this case.

Systematics is a well-established supplier of business software and its contribution to the Mac catalogue is along its usual lines. MacBusiness is a suite of accounting packages specifically designed for the Mac and for first-time users.

The package's functions aim to give you greater conmtrol over debtor and creditor accounts with statements on demand, automatic production of profit and loss reports, VAT reports, maintenance of various ledgers, and some forecasting potential.

In the context of microcomputing, Systematics doesn't work cheap. MacBusiness costs £600, but it will be available as part of the Test-Drive promotion so you won't have to shell out £600 on trust. The package also runs on the Lisa 2, now known as the Macintosh XL.

P&P has announced the P&P Mac Expansion Card, a means of upgrading an ordinary 128K model to the 512K version for £500. The board has six banks of 64K DRAM. It must be installed by P&P and the company warns that your Apple warranty will be invalidated. This being the case, P&P will assume responsibility for the warranty - for 13 months on a brand new machine, and for the remaining period plus one month on a used Mac.