Word: ibm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WASHINGTON: When you?re Al Gore, all tech news is good news -? which can lead to some pretty unorthodox press conferences. Take Wednesday, for example, when the veep announces the completion of the world?s fastest supercomputer, Pacific Blue, built by IBM for the Department of Energy. Big Blue?s new baby runs around 15,000 times faster than your humble desktop model and has 80,000 times more RAM. Talk about your multitasking ?- this puppy performs 3.9 trillion operations a second. Complex calculations that would take months, even on the current crop of supercomputers, will bother Pacific Blue...
...their own gear. These consumers work at small start-ups. They're college students. They're even people who like to telecommute, but from the sofa rather than the home office. Some 30% of laptop purchases will be made by these people during the upcoming year, according to IBM. Price, for them, is a major consideration. So is bang for the buck. Also, apparently, stereo speakers...
With its perfect keyboard and splendidly pixelated active-matrix screen, IBM's ThinkPad has a well-deserved reputation as the best of breed in the notebook category. If you can afford one, that is. I happen to use a year-old ThinkPad 560x, which weighs a bantam 4.1 lbs. Despite its advanced age and relatively pedestrian configuration (I had to add extra RAM), it cost $2,200 new. Luckily for me, my employer paid...
...least, that's how it seems, based on how IBM's new ThinkPad i Series turned out. The company's first consumer-targeted notebooks, due out next month, are priced at $1,499, $1,999 and $2,499. All have active-matrix color screens, 56K modems and 20X CD-ROM drives. And inch-wide Altec-Lansing stereo speakers...
Still, the i Series, particularly the cheapest model, will give good value if you're slightly mobile and even mostly immobile, bound to a couch or just looking for a second PC to knock around the house with. Best news for consumers: IBM isn't the only PC maker that has identified the low-end laptop market. Let the lap wars begin...