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To: Road Walker who wrote (39138)	11/6/1997 8:28:00 AM
From: Harrison Hickman	Respond to of 186894

John: The local paper for IBM PC division says it's a K-6. Harrison Hickman ____________________ ____________________ Today's Raleigh News & Observer nando.net news-observer.com IBM enters sub-$1,000 PC market with Aptiva at OfficeMax By ANDREW PARK, Staff Writer RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK -- After watching its competitors hold fire sales on home PCs for most of the year, IBM has shipped a $999 Aptiva that will be in at least one retail chain for holiday shoppers. Initially, IBM will test the waters by selling the Aptiva E16 at OfficeMax stores. It will have to sell well to revive IBM's lethargic home PC sales, which caused a major restructuring and cost-cutting program at Big Blue's consumer products operations last month. But analysts questioned whether office products stores like OfficeMax, which sell fewer PCs than computer superstores or consumer electronics outlets, are the right place to begin. "It's certainly a very conservative strategy," said Dave Tremblay, a senior industry analyst at Computer Intelligence in Cambridge, Mass. "Christmas is such a huge time of year for the consumer, and you've got to have your best product out there. It's not a time to be testing." IBM would not say when the E16, developed at IBM's Research Triangle Park campus and assembled by Acer Inc. in Texas, will be available in other retail outlets. But industry watchers have wondered when IBM would release a home PC at the low end of the market, where Compaq and Packard Bell sell several models. According to Computer Intelligence, sub-$1,000 PCs accounted for 39 percent of all retail sales in August and more than a third in September, a trend that helped Compaq post record revenues in the third quarter. IBM officials have said they knew they were behind industry trends early this year but needed time to design a PC that it could sell at a low price. "This has obviously been in the works for quite some time," said Jim Bartlett, vice president for product marketing in IBM's consumer division. "Our resellers are telling us that this was definitely worth the wait." With 166 MHz processor, MMX multimedia capability, 16 MB RAM and a 2.1-gigabyte hard drive, the E16 will compete directly with Compaq's $999 Presario 4505. But IBM gave the E16 a faster CD-ROM drive, a faster modem, more video memory and greater expansion capability, Bartlett said. The E16 runs on an American Micro Devices-designed K6 pro-cessor, less expensive and less widely used than the Presario's Pentium chip. Neither PC comes with a monitor.