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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter V who wrote (33968)	6/23/1998 12:57:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Gateway trims notebook prices Cube inside the DVD models By John G. Spooner, PC Week Online June 23, 1998 6:50 AM PT zdnet.com Citing manufacturing efficiencies, Gateway Inc. today will reduce prices by up to $300 on its midrange and high-end notebook PCs. Prices will drop on Gateway's high-end Solo 9100 notebooks series between $100 and $300, said officials at the company, in North Sioux City, S.D. Pricing on Gateway's 9100XL model, configured with a 266MHz Intel Corp. Pentium II processor, a 14.1-inch TFT (thin-film transistor) display, 128MB of SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), an 8GB hard drive and a digital versatile disk-ROM drive, will be lowered from $4,799 to $4,499. The price of the company's Solo 9100LS model, which offers a 266MHz Pentium II, 64MB of SDRAM and a 5GB hard drive, will fall from $3,799 to $3,599. The company will cut the price of its 9100SE model, with a 233MHz Pentium II, 64MB of SDRAM and a 4GB hard drive, by $100 to $3,199 Gateway will also lower prices on its midrange 5100 series by up to $300, officials said. The company's 5100XL notebook, configured with a 266MHz Pentium II, a 14.1-inch TFT display, 80MB of RAM and a 4GB hard drive, will drop from $3,599 to $3,299. Gateway will shave $100 from the price of its 5100LS model, which offers a 233MHz Pentium II, 48MB of RAM and a 4GB hard drive. The notebook will now be priced at $2,899. Gateway can be reached at www.gateway.com.

To: Peter V who wrote (33968)	6/23/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Panasonic Pushes DVD-RAM At PC Expo 06/22/98 DVD Report (c) 1998 Phillips Business Information, Inc. On the heels of the Creative Labs drive that began shipping to Internet customers last month (DVD Report, June 8), more vendors are gearing up to ship their own DVD-RAM kits. And at last week's PC Expo in New York City, Panasonic showcased its new LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive and brought in a slew of different companies to talk to the press about bringing DVD-RAM to market. (Panasonic parent Matsushita's own appraisal of the market for recordable DVD is rosy. By the year 2000, Matsushita expects sales of nine million DVD-RAM and DVD-R drives, compared to just 10 million DVD-Video players and 60 million DVD-ROM drives.) Potential customers for DVD-RAM include the usual suspects (PC users, multimedia developers) as well as corporate customers that have previously relied on tape drives for archival storage. For example, Plexus (Sunnyvale, CA), a division of BancTec, is wooing customers with a system that writes to DVD-RAM media in a proprietary format - the entire disc may be erased and rerecorded, but changes cannot be made to recorded data. At the very least, Plexus is trying to migrate companies from tape to CD, since CD should be forward compatible with future DVD systems while tape is not. Meanwhile, a start-up company called Hbourne Digital Video Designs (San Francisco, CA) is targeting the broadcast market with a bare-bones DVD-RAM authoring system that stresses simplicity. A touch- screen interface guides users through the basics of processing and encoding their DVD assets, including video object files and UDF formatting, without getting involved in the nuts and bolts of authoring DVD-Video. "The target here is, can we get some video on a disc, and can we do it quickly and inexpensively?" explained Hbourne president P.F. Troy. The system is scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter. Prassi Software (San Jose, CA) joined the party, announcing that its DVD Rep software for DVD-R and DLT tapes is being updated in version 2.0 to support DVD-RAM. Contact: Plexus, phone: 408-747-1210 or Web: www.plx.com; Hbourne, phone: 415-928-8668 or email: HDVDinfo@aol.com; Prassi, phone: 408-224-0100 or Web: www.prassi.com Hi-Val Demos DVD-RAM Kit On the show floor, Hi-Val demonstrated its DVD-RAM system, which should begin shipping as a retail product by the end of August. Hi- Val's Ed Meadows told DVD Report that the hold-up was that yields from drive manufacturers aren't yet high enough. "We really feel DVD-RAM is where the market is going to go," Meadows said. The kit won't ship until Hi-Val can package it with an RF unit and an MPEG-2 decoder board for a $599 SRP. In other Hi-Val news, Meadows said that the company's DVD software distribution program (DVD Report, February 18) is still going strong, with 20 Babbage's locations scheduled to start testing Hi- Val's racks of DVD-ROM and -Video titles next week. The racks are also in Computer City and CompUSA stores, with CompUSA making a "major commitment" to double the number of titles carried to 200 on July 1, with the goal of 800 DVD titles in stores by Labor Day. Hi-Val receives a royalty for each software unit it distributes. Sony's 5X ROM Drive Set For July Meanwhile, Sony showed an early prototype of its DVD+RW drive, which is unlikely to be available until sometime in 1999. Sony's big DVD release this year will be its new 5x DVD-ROM drive, now scheduled to begin shipping by the end of July. The ROM kit, including a Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus Card for DVD playback (with component outputs for high-end video reproduction) and two DVD-Video titles, will retail for $349.