New York — Personal data assistants and rewritable DVD products may have grabbed the headlines at PC Expo, but there was no shortage of consumer-oriented products even as the show shifted back to its business-to-business roots.
TEAC America rolled out its fastest CD-RW drive to date at PC Expo with the introduction of the 12x write, 10x rewrite and 32x read CD-W512E. The drive will be available in stores in September, replacing the 4x write, 4x rewrite model that is now shipping. Pricing has not been set.
Scott Erlich, TEAC’s product development and marketing manager, said that while CD-RW products are widely accepted by consumers, he wanted to use the show to help push corporations to adopt the technology.
Other companies better known for their consumer products, like Gateway, which had its Gateway@work on display, also emphasized their business lines.
Lexmark added three models to its Z series of inkjet printers. The Z12, Z32 and Z42 Color Jetprinters will start shipping in late July with estimated street prices of $59, $99 and $149. The Z12 will sell through mass merchants Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart, while traditional consumer electronic, computer and home office superstore chains handle the Z32 and Z42.
The Z12 has 1,200 x 1,200 dpi resolution with print speeds of 3 ppm for color and 6 ppm for text. The Z32 has slightly faster print speeds and the same resolution. The Z42 offers USB connectivity and print speeds of 10 ppm for text and 5 ppm for color.
ViewSonic was on hand with one new CRT and three flat-panel monitors. The PF815 is ViewSonic’s first 22-inch CRT monitor. It is based around a PerfectFlat picture tube with 1,920 x 1,440 picture resolution.
The new LCD products have 14-, 15- and 18-inch screens, with the first model featuring touchscreen technology. Shipping and pricing information were not available.
AMD announced the addition of 550MHz and 533MHz processors to its Mobile AMD K6-2 family. Both chips feature AMD’s PowerNow battery-conservation technology and are being included in notebook computers from Hewlett-Packard.
Sensory Science showed its soon-to-be-released MP-2300 MP3 portable music player. The $299 device is the first MP3 player to use Iomega’s 40MB Clik drive and media instead of flash memory.
A Clik disk can hold about 75 minutes of music, two $10 disks are included with the player, and the player will run for 12 hours on one set of batteries. A ship date was not announced.
