Nec Saturates All Sectors Of Market
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday February 10, 1992
IN a swag of releases intended to claw back lost market share, NEC Information Systems last week launched new machines into almost every sector of the PC market.
Among them were a colour 486SX laptop, a colour 25Mhz 386SL notebook, a range of desktop PCs with souped-up graphics processing, two EISA (extended industry standard architecture) 486 workstations and a $4,000 PostScript Level 2 laser printer.
With this range NEC is out to reinstate itself among the quality corporate suppliers. The emphasis is on technology, not price.
For $11,760, the 20Mhz 486SX ProSpeed (laptop), is said to be "far more powerful" than a 33Mhz 386 desktop. NEC said it was the first to support 256 colours, Super VGA resolution (640x480) and have a 32-bit EISA internal slot. It also has two megabytes of system memory expandable to 20 Mb, a 120 Mb hard disk and weighs 7.6 kg.
The new UltraLites continue NEC's better-known notebook range. Coming amid a rush of new notebooks that all use Intel's power-conserving 386SL, NEC has provided both an upmarket colour version and a more aggressively priced entry-level model. The 16-colour Ultralite SL25 (25 Mhz) will be good for presenters as it will simultaneously drive an external video as well as its own display. However, it costs $8,356 with an 80 Mb drive.
The 20 Mhz version will cost $5,250 for 80 Mb. With the desktops NEC has emphasised graphics performance above all else. Two new technologies include Image Video, a dedicated video bus said to overcome graphics bottlenecks especially with Windows and ImageSync, which works with NEC's "flicker-free"Multisync monitors.
© 1992 Sydney Morning Herald