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To: greenspirit who wrote (48881)	2/26/1998 1:17:00 PM
From: henry tan	Respond to of 186894

Thread,Taiwanese vendors ready sub-$1,000 Pentium II business PCs Surprised that those PCs are even built with ATI graphic card and Ethernet adapter. Is there still space in sub 1000 segment for AMD and NSM. ? infoworld.com Taiwanese vendors ready sub-$1,000 Pentium II business PCs By Terho Uimonen InfoWorld Electric Posted at 8:58 AM PT, Feb 26, 1998 TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwanese PC makers will unveil at next month's CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany, new Pentium II-powered business desktop models that in this year's second quarter are set to hit price points below the magic $1,000 mark. Leading the effort to lower Pentium II business PCs' prices are several of the same Taiwanese makers -- such as Acer and First International Computer (FIC) -- that were the manufacturing muscle behind many of the highly successful sub-$1,000 Pentium-class consumer desktop PCs launched last year. The vendors are now set for a repeat performance, this time targeting the business segment -- with the only caveat being that Intel's Pentium II pricing is still too high for the units to include a monitor, officials said. FIC, for example, will showcase its small-footprint Sahara Databook managed PC featuring a 233-MHz Pentium II processor that is targeted squarely at the sub-$1,000 market. The Sahara Databook's customizable design will let the Taipei-based company's OEM customers meet the requirements of several business-desktop segments -- from a stripped-down sub-$900 NetPC to a fully functional corporate workstation, said Ernest Chen, president of FIC's PC division. By May, following Intel's next round of processor price cuts, OEMs should be able to offer the Sahara Databook in fully functional PC configurations at $999, officials said. "We have seen there is genuine demand in the business market for easy-to-manage network-ready PC solutions at sub-$1,000 price points," Chen noted. Measuring only 310mm-by-300mm-by-88mm, the unit's all-in-one motherboard still offers the full range of capabilities expected in a business PC. Built around Intel's 440LX chip set, the motherboard includes an on-board ATI Rage II 2C accelerated graphics port video controller and video Synchronous Graphics RAM, as well as an Intel 10/100Mbps Ethernet controller and a Crystal 4235 3-D full-duplex audio chip. The motherboard also features two DIMM slots that can house up to 256MB of EDO or synchronous DRAM, the company said. Due to its slim design, however, expansion capabilities will be limited to one PCI and ISA/PCI combination slot, while its three drive bays can house a hard drive of up to 6GB, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and either a 24/32x CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM drive. Acer engineers, meanwhile, are readying a Pentium II version of the Pentium MMX-powered AcerPower FlexT4000, a network-ready PC targeted at the corporate market that already sells for as little as $767 in the United States, said sources close to the company. But the race to reach ever-lower price points will heat up even more in the third quarter, when the vendors are set to release their first offerings based on Intel's forthcoming 266-MHz "lite" version of the Pentium II, officials said. Code-named Covington, the chip will feature a similar core to the Pentium II but will come in a package without the 512KB of Level 2 cache memory that is currently built into the Pentium II cartridges. Accompanying the launch of Covington will be a new motherboard form factor called microATX and a chip set named 440EX, previously code-named 440LXR, which will allow vendors to bring down system prices to as low as $800 to $900, said sources at Taiwanese companies. First International Computer Inc., in Taipei, can be reached at fic.com.tw. Acer Inc., in Hsichih, a Taipei suburb, is at acer.com.