IBM launches trio of Pentium 4-based desktops

IBM WILL ANNOUNCE Tuesday its first three desktop PCs featuring Intel's new Pentium 4 processor -- a high-end consumer-oriented PC and two desktop machines aimed at businesses.

The consumer PC is the NetVista A60i, which, if equipped with a specific graphics card, can record television programs on its hard drive. For the business segment, IBM is offering a revamped IntelliStation M Pro 6849 designed for multimedia developers, engineers, and animators, along with the NetVista A60.

All three feature the Intel Pentium 4 chip running at clock speeds of 1.4GHz or 1.5GHz. This new chip from Intel has been designed to do a better job of handling advanced graphics, audio, streaming video, Internet-related tasks, and imaging than the Pentium III, according to Intel.

The Pentium 4's microarchitecture, called NetBurst, is the first processor microarchitecture for desktop PCs developed by Intel since 1995. The Pentium 4's improvements include a higher-performance engine, a more advanced system bus, and a better cache, Intel said.

The NetVista A60i is IBM's most sophisticated consumer desktop to date, said Bruce Rasa, product marketing manager for the IBM NetVista division.

"We're completing the NetVista product family with this PC," he said.

IBM will begin shipping the NetVista A60i in mid-December at a starting price of $2,299. The model that features ATI Technologies' Radeon All-in-Wonder graphics card can record television programs with VCR-like quality and store them on its hard drive. Users will be able to play back recorded programs and pause live broadcasts that are being stored simultaneously on the hard disk.

The model that comes with nVidia's GeForce GTS 4X AGP graphics card can't record TV programs, Rasa said. Moreover, the NetVista A60i doesn't come with an IEEE 1394 port, but users interested in transferring home videos from their camcorders to the PC can add this support, Rasa said.

The NetVista A60i also features a DVD-ROM drive that lets users play DVDs for viewing on the PC's monitor or on an attached TV set screen. Users can choose either a 45GB or a 75GB hard drive. The PC comes with 128MB of RDRAM (Rambus DRAM), expandable to 1GB, and a CD-RW drive and 56Kbps modem. It ships with Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition (ME) operating system, Lotus Development's SmartSuite Millennium Edition, and other IBM software. Loudspeakers and Creative Labs' SoundBlaster Live audio card are also standard, while some models include a subwoofer.

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