Lucius and Intel Investors - Compaq Blows Down PC Prices to $699 - GUESS What's Inside!
No, Not an AMD K6.
No, No, No... Not a Cyrix MediaGX
You guessed right!
It's Intel Inside!
Somebody Better Keep Fuchi off the Golden Gate Bridge!
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news.com
Compaq hits new low:
$699
By Brooke Crothers
December 30, 1997, 6:30 p.m. PT
update A Presario model from Compaq
(CPQ) has pushed the price of a full-featured
PC to as low as $699.
With the Presario 4212ES, Compaq
appears to be shattering yet another price
barrier and possibly setting the stage for a
new category of consumer systems priced
well below $1,000. This model has also been
sold to schools.
Interestingly, the price point is being
achieved with an Intel MMX Pentium
processor, not an alternative chip from Cyrix
or Advanced Micro Devices.
The $699 Presario 4212ES is being sold
through Computer Discount Warehouse
(CDW), a major PC reseller, as a special
holiday bundle. The box alone is $699; with a
monitor the system sells for $899.
"It's an excellent price point. "They'll keep
hitting [the sub-$1,000 market] harder and
harder," said Matt Sargent, an analyst at
Computer Intelligence, a market research
firm.
By comparison, another Compaq model, the
Cyrix-based Presario 2200, has been selling
for $799 without a monitor and $999 with a
monitor.
The 4212ES comes with a 166-MHz MMX
Pentium processor, a 2.1GB hard drive, a
CD-ROM drive, a built-in Ethernet network
connection, 16MB of memory, a 14-inch
monitor, and software bundle including
Microsoft Works, Microsoft Bookshelf, and
Microsoft Encarta for $899.
The system also boasts MPEG video
playback technology and two Universal Serial
Bus (USB) connections.
The 4212ES offers no ability to add extra
options inside the box, however. "You get
what you see. You buy the box and get what's
in the box and that's it," said a CDW
representative, alluding to the lack of internal
expansion.
Options can be added externally by plugging
them into the available ports. Like all PCs,
the system comes with external connections
such as serial and parallel ports as well as
the USB ports. The USB connections allow
hook up of consumer electronic products
such as digital cameras.
Paul |
