David, I think you're right on the time frame being mid-1998 for the 100Mhz SDRAM.
The PII does present an interesting challenge for INTC. I don't know how representative I am of the people who expect to buy a PC over the next 3 months, but I'm certainly not in the category of people waiting around for a PII. They've done a terrible job of convincing people like me (replacement buyer w/ price point in the 1400-1800 range; primary uses: the net, word processing, spreadsheets) that it's in my best interests to pony up extra bucks for processing power that is barely noticable given my uses when it seems to make more sense to put that extra buying power to use on pumping up some of the configuration options offered. When I upgrade from my 486 it's going to be a quantum leap. But where's the added value in making the change from a Pentium 200 w/ MMX to a PII 200? Their current PII TV ad campaign IMHO is a disaster. I don't know what the advertising trade mags are saying about it, and I really don't care since few people in advertising understand anything about business other than the business of advertising anyway...and sometimes they can't even get that right (the Miller Lite campaign in its early days was dead-on right for the demo it was going after, but these nit-wits pilloried it; granted, now it's crossed the fine line between clever and stupid, but early on it was genius...)
Disco, in limited doses, can be a good thing - but there's a time to sell purely on the basis of "brand identity" and there's a time to start beefing up the "sell the products themselves" component.
Anyway...
Found an EBN piece highlighting expected mix of DRAM v. SDRAM into 1998 at:
techweb.com
Good trading,
Tom
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