Houston – Even though Compaq might not exist as a separate company at this time next week, the vendor yesterday rolled out its new consumer PC line.
Hewlett-Packard’s shareholders will decide whether or not to absorb Compaq on March 19, but in the meantime has introduced a Presario line featuring a revamped industrial design, 2GHz processors from Intel and AMD and NVIDIA 2 4x AGP graphics cards. The new a silver and carbon colored Presario line are available immediately direct from Compaq and will hit retail in April.
The introductions include the Presario 4000, 6000 and 8000 series. The 4000 Series starts at $649, monitor not included, with a 1.3GHz Celeron processor. The 6000 Series steps up to a Intel Pentium 4-level chips and can be configured with DVD-R/RW and DVD/CD-RW drives and will carry a $799 starting suggested retail price. The high-end 8000 Series, starting at a suggested retail price of $1.099, offers both the AMD Athlon XP2100 processor and Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz processors along with a 120GB hard drive, 1GB of DDR memory.
Compaq also introduced its first flat-panel monitor designed for consumers and a new inkjet printer. The 17-inch FP7020 has the viewable area of a 19-inch CRT monitor and a $418 suggested retail price. The printer is the IJ650, which will carry a $99 suggested retail price.
