Compag Announcement (full text). - No mention of LS-120.
According to the 6/16 WSJ article, Compag plans to include the LS120
in all its future PC models. Well, no mention of LS120 here.
Look to me that Compag management has figured out a way to wiggle
out of the LS120 partnership. Is my memory fading, or was it Compag
that Iomega sold the LS120 technology to, not Matsushita? Now according
to the "experts" from WSJ, Compag is no longer a LS120 partner,
just a big PC maker endorsing it. And now no mentioning of LS120 in the
new line. How clever!
This is still a mystery with only a few clues. We'll just to wait and see.
Now the article... Young
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Compaq Computer Corp. will attempt to simplify the PC purchase
process for corporate buyers this summer by consolidating its
desktop PC lines under one brand name.
The Houston computer maker will announce in July that it is melding
the ProLinea and Deskpro corporate desktop PC lines into a single
brand, the Deskpro, said sources familiar with the plans.
The ProLinea will be discontinued at the time of the announcement,
the sources said. Under the Deskpro brand, the company will offer
corporate users everything from a $1,000 entry-level 100MHz Pentium
system to a network-ready 200MHz Pentium Pro with Windows NT
and expansive management capability, the sources said.
The pricing structure will put certain forthcoming Deskpros significantly
below some of today's ProLineas, such as its low-cost ProLinea E.
As a result of the consolidation, Compaq will halve the number of
stock-keeping units it currently offers to about 30, sources said.
"It makes sense to consolidate because too many brands do nothing
but confuse buyers," said Marshall Fernholz, procurement manager of
hardware and software at the American Medical Association, in Chicago,
which has an installed base of about 400 Deskpro PCs. "I applaud the
move because [the ProLinea and Deskpro] lines do overlap, and this
simplifies life," said Fernholz.
Other Compaq corporate customers, however, expressed concern over
continued quality of the Deskpro line.
"We've had a tough experience putting ProLineas on our network,"
said Bill Kannberg, network administrator at Hillsboro County Data
Management, in Tampa, Fla. "My only concern [about consolidating the
lines] would be that they don't cheapen the Deskpro in any way."
As it plans to consolidate its desktop lines, Compaq also is readying
new models. In the fourth quarter, Compaq plans to announce dual-processor,
Windows NT-based Pentium Pro personal workstations for the engineering
and high-end graphics market, officials confirmed.
The company also will broaden the Presario consumer PC to reach
home-office and small-business users in a strategy similar to that used
by Hewlett-Packard Co. with its Vectra 500. The forthcoming Presario
PCs, due later in the summer, will include integrated communications,
a business software suite such as Microsoft Corp.'s Office Professional,
document management software and a thin-film-transistor flat panel display,
sources said.
Other features include three-dimensional sound, the scanner-in-a-keyboard
and a phase dual/compact disk drive that accommodates both a
standard CD and an optical disk for data archiving that stores up to
650M bytes of data, the sources said.
The rationale for the commercial consolidation, according to sources,
is to simplify the purchase process while offering a wide range of products
under one brand name.
The company has been slowly eliminating configurations on both the
ProLinea and Deskpro lines for some time (see PC Week, Feb. 19, Page 1).
Product overlap is not uncommon in the PC industry. IBM Personal
Computer Co. found itself with overlap in the ValuePoint and PS/2
desktop lines. At the time, IBM customers complained of too many
models from which to choose and not enough differentiation.
IBM killed both lines in 1994 and formed a single brand, the IBM PC.
Compaq officials declined to comment on its consolidation plans.
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End of article
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