On The Runway

Entrepreneur, Dec, 2000 by Mike Hogan

Like the fashion world's avant-garde clothing, new concept PCs using Intel's latest technologies offer a sneak peak at what's to come.

It's the holidays, the season when makers and resellers of chips and PCs have visions of sugar plums and margin-saving shopping sprees dancing in their heads. This is the quarter that makes or breaks the year for many of them--and it's almost always a good time to be shopping for a new PC, or maybe even 10 of them.

This year, your shopping trip is likely to be more satisfying than it's been in years past, thanks to several trends just now coming together. A softening U.S./ world economy, especially in Europe, has hurt PC sellers' top lines, while higher energy costs and interest rates will jack up shipping and inventory financing costs, prompting PC sellers to "move iron."

The end of the year is always a time of inventory disgorgement and deep discounting on old lines to make room for new models. But this year, PC product sellers have to push both new and old equipment into markets with much softer-than-expected demand. The growth in world PC sales is flattening out, says an IDC report.

Expect to see not just better prices, but also greater manageability, which could reduce your after-sale costs, according to Gartner senior analyst Mark Margevicius. Other good news for you: A slowdown in the pace of new software releases means hardware doesn't become obsolete as quickly, he says. You might squeeze an extra few months Out of your current PCs until resellers get really desperate and/or you find a deal with the right terms.

Buy only as much machine as you really need for each worker, but be aware that the growth of high-bandwidth multimedia applications for the Web will require extra processing power for those directly involved in e-commerce.

FALL FASHIONS

As is its habit, Intel has released a bevy of new microprocessors and related component designs this season. That, in turn, is sending large PC-makers racing to discount old systems and deliver new technology.

Computer options are dizzying, and PC World (www.pcworld.com) and PC Magazine (www.zdnet.com/pcmag) are good places to find candidates for your short list. If it's worthy of coverage, it will be dissected in both magazines--and on their respective Web sites--in different ways.

Because of Intel's market reach, most of your PC options feature "Intel Inside," although these days, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is giving Intel a good run for your money. Even if you don't buy an AMD-based machine, you'll still benefit from the increased price/ development pressure it puts on Intel, says Roger Kay, manager of IDC's PC hardware group.

Unlike some of its chips in the past, he AMD technology of today is OK. AMD chips have no significant incompatibilities with software designed for Intel machines, says Kay, and they're used by brand names like HP, Compaq and Gateway. But Intel dominates PC hardware--not just processors, but also motherboards, chipsets and related components--and it drives most new PC technology initiatives.

At press time, PC-makers are still touching up their fall lines. But the harbingers of new hardware are the concept PCs Intel introduced at its recent developers forum. As in any other fashion show, some are a little too avant garde for general consumption, like the Badis Badis with its movable cooling fins on top. But the features in the concept PCs below are already starting to pop up in more mainstream PCs:

Akeru: The Akeru is the highest performance concept PC, designed for full-media e-commerce, engineering or analytical applications. Powered by the new Pentium 4 processor, it also has the latest chipset, system bus and graphics enhancements. Its tool-free/ screwless chassis, not much larger than a notebook computer stood on end, offers easy access to Intel's MicroATX form factor MB with its patented pop-out components for upgrade or repair. Akeru's profile resembles the current Compaq (www.compaq.com) iPAQ and Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) e-Vectra lines.

Enchant: Similarly, the Enchant resembles IBM's (www.ibm.com) NetVista X40, an all-in-one PC that earned Intel's Innovative PC award. Not your yuppie brother's iMac, the sleek, black NetVista X40 merges the CPU into the frame of a flat-panel LCD display. An optional IBM MicroDrive puts 1GB of storage on a disk the size of a quarter.

ICE: The ICE is a brick-like design that emphasizes connectivity. Destined to be a network-attached desktop PC and offering instant access to the Internet, the ICE has the least technology because it takes advantage of the distributed resources of the networks to which it is attached.

The innovative case designs of some of these PCs are less noteworthy than the technology within, which makes something other than a beige box possible. With the goal of improving ease of use, Intel (and AMD, for that matter) has made the strategic decision to phase out old technologies and push harder on new ones.

For starters, you'll find many PC designs devoid of legacy PC interfaces-- parallel, serial, PS/2--which are slow and just take up motherboard space, says Steve Whalley, manager of Intel's Ease of Use Initiative. Intel shrunk its new FlexATX motherboard 30 percent, in part by relying solely on the USB for mouse, keyboard, monitor and other peripheral connections.