October 20, 1997

Low-Priced PCs Digital and HP add sub-$1,000 models for business users B y Bob Francis Cs with sub-$1,000 price tags-which already account for a large chunk of sales to consumers-are becoming more familiar to business users. Digital Equipment this week is introducing a low-end system that starts at $900. Hewlett-Packard last week cut the price of its low-end corporate desktop to less than $1,000. Neither price includes a monitor. Both vendors also cut prices on midrange and high-end desktops, and Digital renamed its PC lines. Digital's new PC 3010 comes in two versions. A system with a 166-MHz Pentium MMX processor, 16 Mbytes of RAM, and a 1.2-Gbyte hard drive is priced at $969. A similarly configured system with Advanced Micro Devices' K6 chip and an MMX-type processor is priced at $899; Digital also offers the K6 version with a monitor for $999 . "There's definitely a market for these systems," Scott Miller, an analyst with Dataquest Inc., says of Digital's K6 system. "Not every employee in a company needs the latest Pentium II machine. All the corporate check boxes are covered-except for the Intel processor, and Digital has an answer for that." To reach the low price, Digital used a cost-cutting design including a new onboard chip that combines core logic and graphics functions. Compaq Computer has used a similar approach in consumer PCs with chips from Cyrix Corp. "It's a similar idea, to reduce the number of chips on the board," says Tom Roberts, product marketing manager for Digital's PC group. The PC 3010 lacks a network interface card or networking chip, primarily because most corporations have their own requirements for network cards, Roberts says. "It's been our experience that most companies disable the built-in NIC and use their own," he says. Digital is renaming its PC lines, replacing the old Venturis and Celebris names with plai ner monikers such as Digital PC 3100 and Digital PC 5100. It's cutting the price of the Digital PC 5500, formerly the Celebris GL-2, by 22% to $2,953. The machine has a 266-MHz Pentium II, 32 Mbytes of RAM, and a 4-Gbyte hard drive. Hewlett-Packard last week also cut prices as much as 16%, aiming to trim the price difference between its systems and those from direct-sales vendors such as Dell Computer, Gateway 2000, and Micron Computer. Vectra desktops now start at $958 for a system with a 166-MHz Pentium MMX, a 600-Mbyte hard drive, and 16 Mbytes of RAM. HP also dropped prices on Pentium II systems. A Vectra VL with a 233-MHz Pentium II processor, a 2.5-Gbyte hard drive, and 32 Mbytes of RAM is now $1,621, down from $1,925. Back to News in Review Send Us Your Feedback Top of the Page

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