Thursday, December 5, 2002
Wal-Mart is offering a $199 computer targeting novices PC user looking for a way onto the Internet as well as high-end users wanting a second PC.
The promise of a PC replacement ,monitor sold separately— slimmed down to surf the Web and carry out limited tasks — has long tantalized the tech world but failed to generate many sales, especially as prices of name brand computers have slid.
The Wal-Mart PC are full-fledged, if low-powered, computers, but they are not loaded with Microsoft's Windows software or the best known microchips — meaning that the average user will not get exactly what he or she is used to.
Although the Wal-Mart machine has a slower microchip than more expensive computers, rival machines may not surf the Web much faster, since the speed of the Internet connection is usually the bottleneck in online tasks, said Rob Enderle, an analyst at competing research group Giga.
"It is awfully hard to beat this for the price point," he said.
As Wal-Mart heads into its first holiday season offering the $199 machines, it says sales are already exceeding expectations.
"What we're finding is largely tech enthusiasts buying these items, but we've also seen some individuals, as well as businesses and some schools," said spokeswoman Cynthia Lin. She declined to quantify sales, although knowledgeable sources put them in the thousands of units per month.
The machines, manufactured by Microtel Computer Systems, aim to provide an experience similar to Windows by using operating systems based on the free Linux system. They support high-speed Internet (though the service itself is not included) and have a CD drive that can read music and data disks, but not record them.
They also have relatively small hard disk drives of 10 gigabytes. There is no modem, floppy disk drive, or monitor, and the VIA Technologies microchip that is the brains of the machine may not be known to users familiar with Intel and AMD processor.
By: DocMemory
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