More on HP's new PCs.............
HP Intros Sub-$800 Multimedia PC
****HP Intros Sub-$800 Multimedia PC 01/05/98 SAN FRANCISCO,
CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1998 JAN 5 (NB) -- By Craig Menefee,
Newsbytes. Wave good-bye to the sub-$1,000 benchmark for low-cost
PCs. Hewlett-Packard Company [NYSE:HWP] has now announced a $799 multimedia home
PC, the Pavilion 3260, that hits the lowest PC price point ever achieved by HP.
The new Pavilion was the lead item in a bevy of price point announcements that included
reductions of up to 46 percent for HP AdvanceStack 10Base-T and 100Base-T hubs and 30
percent on Motorola and IBM processor probes, including those for PowerPC
microprocessors. The firm also started a trade-up program with up to 15 percent price
reductions for various analytical instruments.
The new HP machine is built around a 200 megahertz (MHz) Intel Pentium MMX central
processing unit (CPU) and 32 megabytes (MB) of memory. Newsbytes notes this kind of
power would have cost more than $1,000 without a monitor not long ago.
Intel cut its prices for entry-level Pentium II 233 MHz chips two weeks ago by a third, to
encourage PC sales during the sluggish post-holiday selling period. The new Pavilion 3260 is
one of the first consumer machines to take advantage of those cuts.
The $799 Pavilion 3260 was just the most attention-grabbing entry in a series of four machines
for the home market, at which HP has recently launched a high-profile series of ads. All are
Intel-based multimedia machines, the firm said.
Next up in price from the 3260 is the Pavilion 8240, which costs $1,099. It has a 233MHz
Pentium central processing unit (CPU) housed in a mini-tower case. The Pavilion 8260, at
$1,699, has a 266MHz Pentium II CPU, while the Pavilion 8275, at $1,999, has a 300MHz
Pentium II CPU and DVD drive.
Stated Harry W. (Webb) McKinney, general manager of HP's Home Products Division: "Even
consumers paying less than $1,000 want high-quality, easy-to-use multimedia PCs they can
trust to work."
Ed Bauer, Intel's vice president for North America marketing and sales, called the new HP
machines "powerful, compelling solutions."
All the new machines come bundled with HP's Personal Creativity Studio software to let users
e-mail photos, create personalized greeting cards, produce home videos with special effects,
and a one-touch keyboard button that launches an Internet browser with predefined news
sports and entertainment target sites.
The firm said the machines also feature TV-out ports to let users display DVD, World Wide
Web, and multimedia content on their TV screens, while Polk Audio speakers enable high
fidelity sound at the PC console.
More information on the new HP products is available on the Web at hp.com .
Reported by Newsbytes News Network: newsbytes.com .
(19980105/Press & Reader Contact: Larry Sennett, HP, 408-553-2916, E-mail
larry_sennett@hp.com; or Diane Clark, Alexander Communications, 415-923-1660, E-mail
dclark@alexander-pr.com /HPDOLLARS/PHOTO) |
