IBM Lowers Prices Up to 20 Percent on Pentium II/MMX Business PCs; Customers Benefit From Savings Generated by Inventory and Distribution Leadership

Business Wire, March 19, 1998

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 1998-- IBM (a) today reduced prices on its best-selling Intel Pentium (b) II commercial desktop computers by up to 20 percent, and by up to 13 percent on business PCs featuring Intel's MMX (b) technology.

The IBM PC 300GL, introduced last month, is now priced at just $1,099 (1), and features a 233 MHz (2) Pentium II processor, 16 MB (3) of SDRAM, and a 2.5 GB (3) hard drive.

"Unlike companies cutting prices only on older systems, IBM is also offering significant savings on our hottest-selling Pentium II based models," said Rod Adkins general manager, IBM Desktop Systems. "We will continue to assert our leadership and ensure that the cost savings we've realized through our channel initiatives are passed on to our customers."

Reductions of up to 13 percent were taken on the award-winning PC 300GL and PC 300PL featuring MMX technology, with prices now starting at $839 (1). In addition, IBM lowered prices on its popular General Business Series monitors by as much as 14 percent. For example, the G51, 15-inch color monitor now starts at $239 (1). This follows price reductions earlier this week of up to 36 percent on selected Flat Panel models.

IBM's aggressive pricing results from cost efficiencies achieved under its Advanced Fulfillment Initiative (AFI). By improving everything from product design and parts procurement, to forecasting, assembly and delivery, AFI is lowering product inventories and generating savings which are passed on to customers.

IBM offers the most highly managed PCs in the industry. The PC 300GL features IBM's widely imitated Wake on LAN (a) technology (4) and is supported by IBM LANClient Control Manager (a) (LCCM) software. Together, IBM's Wake on LAN and LCCM enable customers to perform a wide range of tasks remotely and unattended, such as updating BIOS and CMOS settings, installing an operating system image, and powering-off the system.

All IBM PC 300GL and PC 300PL models come pre-loaded with Windows NT (c) or Windows 95.

For more information visit IBM at www.ibm.com/pc/desktop

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(a) Trademark or registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp.

(b) Trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corp.

(c) Trademark or registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

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(1) Estimated reseller price. Resellers set their own prices, so prices may vary.

(2) MHz only measures microprocessor internal clock speed, not application performance; many factors affect application performance

(3) MB equals one million bytes when referring to hard disk space, and GB equals one billion bytes. Accessible capacity may vary.

(4) Requires purchase of IBM Wake on LAN-enabled network interface card sold separately

CONTACT: Ray Gorman

919/254-7037

rgorman@us.ibm.com

or

Tim O'Malley

914/766-3824

tomalley@us.ibm.com