As Taiwan's Acer personal computer manufacturer unveils its
stripped down PC, dubbed the AcerBasic, the company is expecting
to announce some unusual marketing strategies alongside it.
Among them, tailoring the computer to specific service
industries, and signalling alliances with telecommunications
companies to provide it as a freebie to Internet subscribers. The
AcerBasic ranks among the plainest PCs ever to hit the market.
For $500, users get a machine that provides access to the
Internet, as well as some rudimentary word processing and games.
The PC uses Windows 3.1 software and the DOS operating system.
The package includes a 133-MHz Pentium class microprocessor and
4MB of RAM. It also comes with a "zip drive", a removable
cartridge that provides 100MB of memory; a floppy disk drive; a
keyboard; and a mouse. The AcerBasic can be hooked up to a
computer monitor (not included), or to most television sets, and
can be upgraded to a full blown computer.
Wall Street Journal/Europe. English. June 18, 1996. p4
Acer Taiwan
*-*29 Larry concentrating on Telekom (DB 20/06)
Lawrence Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Oracle, took a leaf out of
a chat-show host's book when he put on "Larry Ellison Live" at a
presentation at the Frankfurt Airport Hotel and wasted no time in
getting to his point: "The network computer is the telephone of
the future." Strategically this showed that the NC is not going
to attack the wide base of the PC but rather to be "a light,
cheap, information tool" for communications applications like
sending and receiving of faxes, E-Mail and surfing the Internet.
Handelsblatt. German. June 11, 1996. p25
Oracle Germany
*-*26 Internet on the TV (DB 20/06)
Netgem, a newly- formed French company, has developed an Internet
terminal, the Netbox, which will be on sale by December at a
price of about NKr2,500. The machine has a 386 processor, 2MB
RAM and a 1MB ROM. For Web or post clients there is a 28.8Bit
modem.
Computerworld Norge. Norwegian. June 14, 1996. p25
Netgem France,Norway