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To: John Rieman who wrote (30833)	3/12/1998 5:41:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Friday is one of his favorite roosting days. We'll see if he's extinct or only endangered.

To: John Rieman who wrote (30833)	3/12/1998 5:41:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Buyers Compromise Performance For Price Mark Camm 03/12/98 Sydney Morning Herald Page 20 Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd THE PC industry is getting smarter, but it is still surprised sometimes at what people buy or want. At last week's Sydney PC IT 98 show at Darling Harbour, for example, most public interest was centred on the cheaper home PCs and printers and not on the latest and fastest systems which were expected to get the most attention. Gateway 2000's productmarketing manager for Australia, Ms Michelle Vanzella, said a growing trend was for buyers to be willing to sacrifice performance for a lower price. "These are people who might choose a slower processor, but increase the amount of memory in the PC," she said. Although home and small business buyers, shopping for their second PC or who had used PCs before, were more aware now of what was available and what they wanted, first-time buyers still needed considerable help and time in deciding what they wanted. Ms Vanzella said Australia was only a tiny market when compared with world-wide sales, but Australians were very quick to take up new technology. This was important for larger markets, such as that in the United States, which could look to Australia as a small but significant testing ground for new products. Gateway 2000, a world leader in the direct marketing of custom-designed PCs, was in a special position to pick up buyer trends quickly, especially in Australia. She said price was still a major factor for most people when they bought a PC, but they were becoming smarter in judging value for money. Other clear trends included: * Ignoring smaller 14-in and 15-in monitors and having 17-in monitors as a minimum requirement. * Ordering more memory with the PC (typically at least 32Mb) rather than choosing to buy more later. * Treating cautiously or avoiding altogether the new DVD (enhanced digital video) technology. * Buying the fastest modems available, even if Internet service providers can't match the speeds, and wanting Internet connections that are easy to set up. * Power users upgrading their systems heading straight for the new 333MHz processors, bypassing the 300MHz processors completely. Ms Vanzella said expectations of Microsoft's Windows 98 were high, with the hope it would allow the newer and faster systems to perform faster and more reliably than they do now with the aging and unreliable Windows 95.

To: John Rieman who wrote (30833)	3/12/1998 6:05:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

More on Sigma/IBM........... From the Semiconductor Pages of Electronic News: March 9, 1998 Issue Sigma Cards Enable Corporate PC Video Fremont, Calif.--Sigma Designs has introduced a pair of digital video cards for the corporate desktop PC environment designed to enable users to play high-quality streaming video and audio on PCs at work. Dubbed the Realmagic NetStream 2 MPEG-2 playback cards, the first card is an ISA-based video card based on MPEG-1 technology hardware. The second card features MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 hardware as well as video out in a PCI-format. Both cards feature IBM's video decoder and Zoran's audio decoder. Both cards support Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms and feature two megabytes of SDRAM and an EM7210 PCI bridge scalar. The boards are sampling with planned production in 2Q98 priced at $379 (msrp). [NOTE: This is more than twice the price of Creative's standalone CUBE MPEG-2 card ($169)] "Video is becoming a reality in the corporate environment," said Prem Talreja, VP of marketing at Sigma. "Everyone thinks of video as just entertainment but that is no longer a reality. The reality is that many corporate LANs and WANs are needing video for communications and inter-office purposes." Sigma has already signed as customers for the NetStream IBM, Compaq Computer Company, Dell Computer, EDS, Hughes Network Systems, OptiVision and Nortel. The playback cards also support various applications programming interfaces (APIs) including MCI, OM-1, Microsoft's ActiveMovie 1.0 and DirectShow APIs.