LAPTOPS(A REPORT ON LAPTOPS)

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The History of Computers













"Who invented the computer?" is not a question with a simple answer. The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention.
This series covers many of the major milestones in computer history (but not all of them) with a concentration on the history of personal home computers.






Computer History
Year/Enter Computer History
Inventors/Inventions Computer History
Description of Event
1936
Konrad Zuse - Z1 Computer First freely programmable computer.
1942
John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry
ABC Computer Who was first in the computing biz is not always as easy as ABC.
1944
Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper
Harvard Mark I Computer The Harvard Mark 1 computer.
1946
John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
ENIAC 1 Computer 20,000 vacuum tubes later...
1948
Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn
Manchester Baby Computer & The Williams Tube Baby and the Williams Tube turn on the memories.
1947/48
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley
The Transistor No, a transistor is not a computer, but this invention greatly affected the history of computers.
1951
John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
UNIVAC Computer First commercial computer & able to pick presidential winners.
1953
International Business Machines
IBM 701 EDPM Computer IBM enters into 'The History of Computers'.
1954
John Backus & IBM
FORTRAN Computer Programming Language The first successful high level programming language.
1955
(In Use 1959)
Stanford Research Institute, Bank of America, and General Electric
ERMA and MICR The first bank industry computer - also MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) for reading checks.
1958
Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce
The Integrated Circuit Otherwise known as 'The Chip'
1962
Steve Russell & MIT
Spacewar Computer Game The first computer game invented.
1964
Douglas Engelbart
Computer Mouse & Windows Nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
1969
ARPAnet The original Internet.
1970
Intel 1103 Computer Memory The world's first available dynamic RAM chip.
1971
Faggin, Hoff & Mazor
Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor The first microprocessor.
1971
Alan Shugart &IBM
The "Floppy" Disk Nicknamed the "Floppy" for its flexibility.
1973
Robert Metcalfe & Xerox
The Ethernet Computer Networking Networking.
1974/75
Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers The first consumer computers.
1976/77
Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers More first consumer computers.
1978
Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston
VisiCalc Spreadsheet Software Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
1979
Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby
WordStar Software Word Processors.
1981
IBM
The IBM PC - Home Computer From an "Acorn" grows a personal computer revolution
1981
Microsoft
MS-DOS Computer Operating System From "Quick And Dirty" comes the operating system of the century.
1983
Apple Lisa Computer The first home computer with a GUI, graphical user interface.
1984
Apple Macintosh Computer The more affordable home computer with a GUI.
1985
Microsoft Windows Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.
SERIES TO BE CONTINUED



A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: PREHISTORY

The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth century B.C.



The Antikythera mechanism, used for registering and predicting the motion of the stars and planets, is dated to the first century B.C. It was discovered off the coast of Greece in 1901.
Arabic numerals are introduced to Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. Roman numerals remain in use in some parts of Europe until the seventeenth century. The Arabic system introduced the concepts of the zero and fixed places for tens, hundreds, thousand, etc., and greatly simplified mathematical calculations.
John Napier, Baron of Merchiston, Scotland, invents logs in 1614. Logs allow multiplication and division to be reduced to addition and subtraction.
Wilhelm Schickard builds the first mechanical calculator in 1623. It can work with six digits, and carries digits across columns. It works, but never makes it beyond the prototype stage. Schickard is a professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany.
Blaise Pascal builds a mechanical calculator in 1642. It has the capacity for eight digits, but has trouble carrying and its gears tend to jam.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents an automatic loom controlled by punch cards.
Charles Babbage conceives of a "Difference Engine" in 1820 or 1821. It is a massive steam-powered mechanical calculator designed to print astronomical tables. He attempts to build it over the course of the next 20 years, only to have the project cancelled by the British government in 1842. Babbage's next idea is the Analytical Engine - a mechanical computer that can solve any mathematical problem. It uses punch-cards similar to those used by the Jacquard loom and can perform simple conditional operations.
Augusta Ada Byron, the countess of Lovelace, met Babbage in 1833. She describes the Analytical Engine as weaving "algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." Her published analysis of the Analytical Engine is our best record of its programming potential. In it she outlines the fundamentals of computer programming, including data analysis, looping and memory addressing.
A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: ELECTRONICS

Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the first general purpose progammable calculator in 1941. He pioneers the use of binary math and boolean logic in electronic calculation.




Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking, is operational by December of 1943. ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer, is developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing tables for artillery. It is built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering and completed in November 1945.
Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the transistor in 1947.
UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer (pictured below), is developed in 1951. It can store 12,000 digits in random access mercury-delay lines. EDVAC, for Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, is completed under contract for the Ordinance Department in 1952.


HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: MINI

Texas Instruments and Fairchild semiconductor both announce the integrated circuit in 1959.





Ivan Sutherland demonstrates a program called Sketchpad on a TX-2 mainframe at MIT's Lincoln Labs in 1962. It allows him to make engineering drawings with a light pen.
A typical minicomputer costs about $20,000.
1965: An IC that cost $1000 in 1959 now costs less than $10. Gordon Moore predicts that the number of components in an IC wills double every year. This is known as Moore's Law.
Doug Engelbart demonstrates in 1968 a word processor, an early hypertext system and a collaborative application: three now common computer applications.




Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel in 1968.
Xerox creates its Palo Alto Research Center - Xerox PARC - in 1969. Its mission is to explore the "architecture of information."
Fairchild Semiconductor introduces a 256-bit RAM chip in 1970.
In late 1970 Intel introduces a 1K RAM chip and the 4004, a 4-bit microprocessor. Two years later comes the 8008, an 8-bit microprocessor.

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: MICRO

Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Traf-O-Data in 1971 to sell their computer traffic-analysis systems.
1972: Gary Kildall writes PL/M, the first high-level programming language for the Intel microprocessor.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are building and selling "blue boxes" in Southern California in 1971. April 1972: Intel introduces the 8008, the first 8-bit microprocessor.Jonathan A. Titus designs the Mark-8, "Your Personal Minicomputer," according to the July, 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics. Popular Electronics features the MITS Altair 8800 on its cover, January 1975. It is hailed as the first "personal" computer. Thousands of orders for the 8800 rescue MITS from bankruptcy. Pictured below: The Homebrew Computer Club in 1975. Paul Allen and Bill Gates develop BASIC for the Altair 8800. Microsoft is born.1977: Apple is selling its Apple II for $1,195, including 16K of RAM but no monitor.







Software Arts develops the first spreadsheet program,
Visicalc, by the spring of 1979. It is released in October and is an immediate success. Copies shipped per month rise from 500 to 12,000 between 1979 and 1981. By 1980 Apple has captured 50% of the personal computer market.
In 1980 Microsoft is approached by IBM to develop BASIC for its personal computer project. The IBM PC is released in August, 1981.
The Apple Macintosh debuts in 1984. It features a simple, graphical interface, uses the 8-MHz, 32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU, and has a built-in 9-inch B/W screen.
Microsoft Windows 1.0 ships in November, 1985.
Motorola announces the 68040, a 32-bit 25MHz microprocessor.
Microsoft's sales for 1989 reach $1 billion, the first year to do so.
A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: NETWORK

Timesharing, the concept of linking a large numbers of users to a single computer via remote terminals, is developed at MIT in the late 50s and early 60s.





1962: Paul Baran of RAND develops the idea of distributed, packet-switching networks.
ARPANET goes online in 1969.
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf develop the basic ideas of the Internet in 1973.
In 1974 BBN opens the first public packet-switched network - Telenet.
A UUCP link between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University establishes USENET in 1979. The first MUD is also developed in 1979, at the University of Essex.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) is established as the standard for ARPANET in 1982.
1987: the number of network hosts breaks 10,000.1989: the number of hosts breaks 100,000. Tim Berners-Lee develops the World Wide Web. CERN releases the first Web server in 1991. 1992: the number of hosts breaks 1,000,000.
The World Wide Web sports a growth rate of 341,634% in service traffic in its third year, 1993.
The main U.S. Internet backbone traffic begins routing through commercial providers as NSFNET reverts to a research network in 1994.
The Internet 1996 World Exposition is the first World's Fair to be held on the internet.
Early Computing Machines
3000 BC: Abacus
The history of the computer begins back in 3000 BC. It was at this time that the abacus was invented. The abacus is a simple counting aid that was used to help people to perform mathematical computations. The abacus is believed to have originated in Asia Minor-more specifically in Babylonia (which is now present-day Iraq), but the form of the abacus that we are most commonly associated with today has its origins in ancient China. An abacus is composed of a rectangular frame that is divided horizontally into two decks: the upper deck and the lower deck. In other words, the beads on the upper deck are slid downwards while the beads on the lower deck slide upwards.
1623: First Mechanical Calculator
Wilhelm Schickard invents the first mechanical calculator in 1623. Schickard's calculator can work with 6 digits, but unfortunately it never goes beyond the prototype stage and was never produced.
1642-1645: Pascaline
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a French mathematician and philosopher builds the Pascaline, also known as the Arithmetic Machine. This mechanical calculator was built to help Pascal's father with his work collecting taxes. It had the capability to do addition and subtraction with up to eight digits, and ran on a series of gears. There were two types of gears: one-tooth gears and ten-teeth gears. The Pascaline was the first mechanical calculator to be actually produced and distributed. Manufacturing and selling of this machine began in 1652 and ended the same year. Very few of the machines were sold. This is most likely because the calculator actually cost more than the people whose work it replaced, and additionally, its gears tended to jam frequently.
1804-1805: Jacquard Loom
Joseph-Marie Jacquard builds the Jacquard Loom. This automatic loom made use of punch cards, which controlled the machine and made the machine programmable. In other words, the instructions of the machine could be changed. By inserting different punch cards into the loom, different patterns could be woven.
1820: Arithrometer
The Arithrometer, built by Charles Zavier and Thomas de Colmar, makes its debut in 1820. The Arithrometer, able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, was the first commercially produced calculator.








Despite this fact, it was never produced at very large quantities. The downside of this calculator was its slowness, which is due to the fact that it was run on wheels. The operator would have to enter the number, and then crank the wheels by hand. Later, in the 1880s, the Arithrometer was remodeled and made sturdier and more reliable. It was particularly useful to engineers and to insurance companies and was widely used until World War I.
1822-1833: Difference Engine
Charles Babbage (1791-1871), an English mathematics professor, comes up with the ideaof the Difference Engine, a mechanical. This machine was automatic and was also commanded by a fixed instruction program. Additionally, it used decimal digits (the numbers 0 through 9). These digits were represented by certain positions on wheels. As the wheels rotate, the numbers would advance. Furthermore, the Difference Engine had an area for the temporary storage of data, and it also was able to print the results of its operations., Babbage was unable to finish producing the Difference Engine.
1834-1846: Analytical Engine
Abandoning his idea of the Difference Engine, Charles Babbage comes up with the idea of an Analytical Engine. Like his Difference Engine, Babbage was never able to complete this machine. The Analytical Engine was to be a general-purpose mechanical computer that would be able to solve ANY mathematical problem. Using punch cards, the Analytical Engine could be programmed to perform many different operations. The reader and the printer were the input and output devices of the machine. An input device is something used to enter information into a compute. Unfortunately, Babbage was only able to construct a portion of this machine and was never successful in turning his wonderful idea into reality.
1843: Lady Lovelace: First Computer Programmer
Augusta Ada Byron, the daughter of poet Lord Byron, was born in 1815 and died in 1852. This countess of Lovelace had taught herself geometry and had also studied other aspects of mathematics. She first met Charles Babbage in 1833, and she later helped him to develop the Analytical Engine A decade later, in 1843, Lady Lovelace published an analysis of the Analytical Engine, in which she not only described the machine and its functions, but in which she also formulated an outline for the basis of computer programming.
1874: Typewriter
Christopher Latham Sholes invented a new typewriter in 1874 that was both fast and commercially successful. Sholes' typewriter had the QWERTYUIOP keyboard that is found on all modern computers today. Before typewriters were invented, clerks were forced to decipher handwritten documents.
1890: Hollerith Tabulator







Herman Hollerith (1859-1929) developed an efficient way to conduct the information gathering and collecting of the United States census. Before, clerks had to travel from city to city-gathering information for the census. This was extremely tedious work and it took hours, if not days to complete. The 1880 census took seven years to finish and was 21,000 pages long!
Hollerith established a new way in which to do the census. A tabulator is a machine that could list the data it was given in table form.
In 1896, Hollerith established the Tabulating Machine Company to market his invention. Years later, in 1911, this company merged with the Computing Scale Company (which manufactured scales for shopkeepers) and with the International Time Recording Company (which produced automatic recording equipment that would calculate the times employees entered and left a workplace).
FIRST GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1940s-1956)
Generally, the computers built during the World War II era are known as the first generation computers. These are considered the first computers, and were extremely different from the computers we see today. These primitive computers relied on vacuum tubes and magnetic drums. The 1st generation computers were also extremely slow.
1939-1942: Atanasoff-Barry Computer
The Atanasoff-Barry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic computer. It was developed by physics and mathematics professor John Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Barry. This computer used the binary system found in modern computers and its method for storing data is quite similar to that of the modern computer. However, in 1942, Atanasoff was recruited to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory to help with war research, and the ABC was never properly put into working order.
1941: Z3
A German named Konrad Zuse invented the Z3, a computer used to design airplanes and missiles. It was the first program-controlled processor.
1943: Colossus
Built in December of 1943 in Bletchly Park (a research center a few miles north of London), Colossus is a computer specifically designed for code breaking. It was used by the British during World War II to break German coded messages.
1944: Harvard Mark I
Howard Aiken proposes the idea of a fully automatic computer in 1937. With the help of IBM, Aiken was able to develop the Mark I by 1944. The Mark I was about 50 feet wide and 8 feet tall, and it was able to handle 23 digit numbers. In addition to the four basic operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, the Mark I was also able to perform trigonometric and probability functions. To input data and instructions, the computer used paper tapes, which were merely toilet-paper-like rolls of punch cards. For output, the Mark I printed the results using two electric typewriters.
1943-1946: ENIAC
In April of 1943, the building of the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC) commenced. Developed by colleagues John Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert Junior and built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, ENIAC was the first general-purpose, all-electronic, programmable digital computer. It cost $400,000 to build and it occupied 50 feet by 30 feet of floor space. This humongous computer consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes (used to process data), 70,000 resistors (used to resist the flow of electric current), 10,000 capacitors (the part of an electrical circuit used to store charge), 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays (used to activate switches when changes in voltages occur). In addition, it weighed 30 tons and used up 160 kilowatts of electrical power. That's nearly enough to dim every single light in a city as big as Philadelphia! The initial purpose of the ENIAC was to compute the values for artillery range tables, but its first actual task was to make certain calculations for the construction of a hydrogen bomb.







The giant computer made use of plug boards, through which its instructions were entered, and it also made use of conditional branching. Conditional branching gave the ENIAC flexibility, allowing it to execute the data. The ENIAC also contained accumulators, special registers used to store data, and in addition the computer used a digital number system rather than the binary system used in modern computers today. Furthermore, the computer operated at extremely fast speeds and had the capability to perform 5,000 operations per second.
The ENIAC was used from February 1946 until October 1955.
1945: EDVAC
John von Neumann (1903-1957), a mathematician and physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, played a key role in the development of the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC). The EDVAC was a successor to the ENIAC, and it had been designed to hopefully correct the weaknesses and problems of its predecessor. The EDVAC had a memory, which held the stored information and data. It was this stored memory that allowed for the EDVAC to be stopped and resumed at various times. The EDVAC also had a central processing unit (CPU), which can be found in many modern computers
1944-1945: Plankalkul
Plankalkul ("Plan Calculus"), developed by Konrad Zuse, was the first real programming language. Plankalkul made use of structured data, in which the records in the database was, a mixture of alphabetic and numeric data.
1947: Transistors





Transistors were first developed in 1947 by Bell Telephone laboratories. They replaced vacuum tubes, which were big, bulky, costly, and unreliable. Transistors are most often used to regulate the flow of an electrical current and to switch electricity on and off.
1948: SSEC
The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was developed by IBM. It occupied space 25 feet by 40 feet and used punch cards, punched tape, vacuum tubes, and relays. It could do 50 multiplications per second, but it was not successful because of its high cost. However, it was of some use. In 1969, it produced tables that were used to plot the course of the spaceship Apollo's flight to the moon.
1949: EDSAC
Maurice Wilkes was a mathematician and a physicist at Cambridge University in 1959 when, inspired by the creation of EDVAC, he designed the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). The EDSAC was the first practical stored-program computer (a computer using its memory for the storage of data), although by today's standards, it would certainly be anything but practical.
1945-1951: Whirlwind
The Whirlwind computer is the result of a project conducted by Jay Forrester and Robert Everrett at MIT. Started in 1945, it took six years before the Whirlwind would be completed in 1951. conditions and to respond accurately to changes such as airspeed, altitude, as well as various other conditions.

1951: UNIVAC
The UNIVAC, or the Universal Automatic Computer, was developed in 1951 by John Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert Junior, the creators of the ENIAC. It was a commercial data-processing computer and was generally sold to governments or other commercial businesses, such as the United States Census Bureau and General Electric. In all, 48 of the machines were sold. Although not as big as the ENIAC, the UNIVAC was still humongous compared to today's computers. The UNIVAC was right in predicting that Dwight D. Eisenhower would become the United State's next president.





1953: IBM 701
The IBM 701 was the first electrical computer. In three years, 19 of these machines were sold.
1954: IBM 650
The IBM 650 was the first mass-produced computer. Despite the fact that only 450 of these were sold in one year, a small number compared to today's statistics, far more of these were sold than any other machine before it. The 650 made use of magnetic drums, which allowed for fast access to stored material.
SECOND GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1956-1963)
The computers built in the 1950s and 1960s are considered the 2nd generation computers. These computers make use of the transistors invented by Bell Telephone laboratories and they had many of the same components as the modern-day computer. For instance, 2nd generation computers typically had a printer, some sort of tape or disk storage, operating systems, stored programs, as well as some sort of memory. These computers were also generally more reliable and were solid in design.
1957: FORTRAN
FORTRAN, an acronym for Formula Translator was the first successful programming language. This language used words and sentences instead of the binary machine codes that had been commonplace in computers prior to the 1950s.





useful in that given a single statement, many instructions would be produced. FORTAN created programs that were just as good as those produced by human programmers. Not only was it one of the most successful programming languages ever, but it also dominated many other languages for years.
1959: COBOL
COBOL, the Common Business Oriented Language, was invented in 1959. This is a business programming language that allowed for computer programs to be easily read.
1960: PDP-1
DEC, or the Digital Equipment Corporation was founded by Kenneth Olsen and Harland Anderson in 1957. In 1960, DEC introduced the Programmed Data Processor, or PDP-1.The PDP-1 could be sold at such a low price because it did not contain many advanced peripherals and software. In other computers, these advanced systems amounted to nearly 80% of the computers' cost.
1961: IBM 1400 Series
The IBM 1400 Series were a major breakthrough for IBM. The first computer in this series is the IBM 1401. The 1401 was a computer system that used transistors instead of the vacuum tubes found in previous IBM computers. The system contained many peripherals, which included, among others, a new high-speed printer. This printer could print 600 lines per minute! The total cost of an IBM 1401 was $150,000. 12,000 of these computers were produced.
1962: SpaceWar!
Space War is the first interactive computer game. It was developed by MIT students Slug Russell, Shag Graetz, and Alan Kotok for the PDP-1 computer. In this game, players must battle against enemy spaceships and face obstacles like the gravity of the sun. The players used primitive joysticks to maneuver their ships. SpaceWar has helped to inspired future video games.
Late 1960s: Integrated Circuit
Introduced in the 1960s simultaneously by Texas Instruments and by Fairchild Semi-Conductor, the integrated circuit combines many tiny transistors and other electrical components onto a small silicon chip. It replaced the need for individual transistors. Later, these integrated circuits were refined so that one small chip could contain thousands of transistors, as well as other similar components. As more and more components were squeezed into a small silicon chip, the size of computers gradually decreased.
THIRD GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1964-1971)
The 3rd Generation Computers were generally much smaller in size than the 2nd and 1st generation computers. This is because these newer computers made us of integrated circuits and semiconductors (a type of material that had the properties of an insulator and a conductor). 3rd generation computers also contained operating systems, which acted as overseers to the performance of a computer and which allowed computers to run different programs at once.
1964-1965: IBM 360
The IBM 360 was introduced by IBM (duh!) in April of 1964, and was finally delivered in 1965. It was not actually a single computer, but was rather a family of six computers and their peripherals. The first models of the IBM 360 used transistors, but later these computers made a transition from transistors to integrated circuits.
1965: PDP-8
The PDP-8 was a successor to the PDP-1. Because it was the first computer to successfully make use of integrated circuits, it was much smaller and cheaper compared to other computers available at the same time. Five years later, this price was reduced to only $3,000. The PDP-8 was relatively simple in design-physically, logically, and electronically. It only had 4,096 words of memory, and its word length was only 12 bits. Minicomputers are medium-sized computers that were much cheaper than the larger and bulkier mainframe computers.
1966: HP-2115
With the invention of the HP-2115, the company Hewlett Packard enters the computer business.
1969: UNIX
At the AT & T Bell Laboratories, programmers Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed a new type of operating system known as UNIX. C was specifically designed for UNIX. Because UNIX used C, it was able to be used in any computer system. This was a big achievement at the time!
1970s: GUI
GUI (graphical user interface, pronounced gooey) was designed by the Xerox Corporation. Users could click on these icons to move and manipulate the folders and other tools. GUI made using computers much easier and is currently found in modern-day computers.
FOURTH GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1971-Present)
The 4th generation computers are marked by the usage of integrated circuits and microprocessors. As the years passed, computers became smaller and smaller, and their prices became lower and lower. Millions of components could be placed onto a single silicon chip. Computers became more efficient and more reliable, and they could perform more and more operations. They began to catch the eye of the general public, and soon more sophisticated software and equipment were designed. Networks became commonplace, and the whole world was connected by the Internet and by the World Wide Web.
1971: Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit microprocessor. Microprocessors are integrated circuits that contain thousands and millions of transistors. The Intel 4004 is the essence of a general-purpose computer. It performed many input and output operations and was also able to read and respond to instructions stored in its memory. The Intel 4004 was first used on March 2, 1972 in the Pioneer 10 space probe.
1972: Intel 8008
In November of 1972, Intel came out with a new 8-bit processor, known as the Intel 8008.

1974: Intel 8080
The Intel 8080 is a re-engineered version of the Intel 8008. It had a larger and more versatile instruction set.





1975: Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 is often called the first personal computer. It was developed by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS), a small company centered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Altair 8800 was sold as an electronic hobbyist kit for only $397. The Altair computers were of blue box-shaped machines with dimensions of 17 inches by 18 inches by 7 inches. They were very simple, and so in complex that they did not even has a keyboard or display. It is hard to believe, but it is the in-complexity of the Altair 8800 that helped to establish the personal computer industry. Because of its limitations, the Altair allowed for other companies to refine the computer and do develop more software.
One such example of software developed for the Altair 8800 is the development of a version of the programming language, BASIC, for this computer. The BASIC programming language designed for the Altair was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the cofounders of the software giant, Microsoft.
Microsoft was not the only company to develop programs and software for the Altair. In fact, more and more companies began entering the software business by developing software and peripherals for the Altair 8800.
1976: CP/M
Developed in 1976 by Gary Kildall of the company Digital Research, CP/M was a popular operating system that made it possible for one version of a program to run on a variety of computers.
1976: Apple II
Apple Computer was started by Stephen G. Wozniak and Steven P. Jobs. In 1976, the company introduced the Apple II to the personal computer market. The computer also was able to be plugged into a standard household outlet.
1979: VisiCalc
VisiCalc, standing for Visible Calculator, is the first personal computer financial analysis tool. This software was developed by Harvard business graduate Dan Bricklin and programmer Bob Frankston. VisiCalc was able to give immediate responses to "what if" questions. It turned personal computers like the Apple II into business machines and was an overnight success.
1981: Osborne I
Invented by Adam Osborne, the Osborne I was the world's first portable computer. By today's standards, it wouldn't exactly be portable because of the fact that it weighed a whopping 24 pounds. The computer had a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes of memory, a modem, and two 5-¼ floppy disk drives. It sold for $1,795.





1981: DN100
The DN100 was the first workstation. It was developed by Apollo Computers, and it had much more power than some of the minicomputers around at the time.

1983: Lisa
The Lisa, invented by Apple Computer, was the first PC to use graphical user interface. It had one MB of RAM and had a 12 inch black and white monitor. The Lisa had two 5-¼ floppy disk drives, 5 MB of profile hard drive, and it used a Motorola 680000 microprocessor.
1983: Microsoft Word
The powerful word processor used in nearly every household today, Microsoft Word, makes its debut as "Multi-Tool Word" in 1983. Microsoft Word can be used for all sorts of word-processing tasks and for creating all sorts of text documents. It is now widely used and widely distributed. Two years after introducing Word to the general public, the company, Microsoft, then introduces its now-famous Microsoft Windows.
1983: Compaq Computer Corporation




In 1983, Compaq Computer Corporation built a portable computer, a clone of the IBM PC. Looking like a sewing machine, Compaq's computer weighed 38 pounds (13 kg). It was an immediate success, bringing in $110 million in its first year of sales.
1984: Apple Macintosh
The Apple Macintosh was designed by Apple Computer and had many of the same features as the Lisa computer, also designed by Apple. The main goal of the Macintosh was to create a computer that would accommodate as many as Lisa's features as possible at a much lower price. The Apple Macintosh used a 32-bit Motorola 68000 central processing unit and had a 9 inch black and white screen. It was first sold for $2,500.
1985: Microsoft Windows Operating System
Microsoft makes its debut with its first windows operating system. The new Apple Macintosh had shadowed the personal computers, and now the Microsoft Windows Operating System gives PC compatibles the same capacities as the Macintosh.
1985: C++ Programming Language
C++ is a general-purpose programming language that was derived from the C programming language. It had many of the C's capabilities, such as the ability to efficiently deal with objects such as bits, bytes, and words and the ability to efficiently implement user-defined type.
1989: SimCity
In 1989, the popular computer game, SimCity, was developed by Will Wright and Jeff Braun. SimCity was a video game that used simulators. The player starts with a plot of land, and he or she must build houses, buildings, roads, and other objects to ensure the survival of the city..
1990: Windows 3.0
In 1990, the software giant Microsoft released a new version of Windows. Windows 3.0 was the first successful version of the software. It was user-friendly and it sported a new interface with new designs that allowed personal computers to support many images and other graphical applications
Recent Developments
The past few years have seen many new developments in the computer industry. As the years have progressed, computers have become smaller and smaller. Laptops and handheld computers have slowly evolved. Weighing anywhere between 4 ounces and 6 pounds, these laptops and handhelds are the very essence of the computer world today. Have fun exploring some of the new innovations found throughout the world today!
DVD
Although not an extremely new invention, the DVD player has just been coming into popularity recently as more and more movies are coming out in DVD and as more and more of the general public are buying DVD players. Also, it is just recently that DVD players have been being built into computers.
Pentium 4 Processor
Microprocessors (also known as the central processing unit or CPU) are the very heart of computers. It is up to the microprocessors to interpret and execute instructions and to perform operations. Throughout the years, scientists have found ways to compress more and more information onto the small silicon chip we call a microprocessor. The Pentium 4, developed by Intel, is a new super-fast processor. It is the successor to Intel's other famous processors, the Pentium 1, 2, and 3. Intel's Pentium microprocessors are found in nearly all personal computers! The Pentium 4 is a new microprocessor with amazing capabilities! It can operate at speeds of up to 1.80 GHz, which is extremely fast! It can also convert MP3s extremely fast, and with an enhanced multimedia support, it can additionally encode videos at high speeds.
Intel Wireless Series
The company, Intel, has developed a series of wireless peripherals for computers. All of these allow for easy and comfortable computer usage.
Base Station
The Base Station is at the very heart of the Intel Wireless Series. All the wireless peripherals connect to the computer via the Base Station. This product allows for the connection of up to eight other wireless products to a personal computer and to the Internet.
Wireless Keypad
The Wireless Keypad is a keypad that does not need to be connected to the computer via wires! It can operate anywhere within a 3 meter radius of the Base Station, and it even includes a folding palm rest! The Wireless Keyboard is designed for as much comfort to the user as possible. It allows for more movement and can be placed at a comfortable location. This keyboard also includes special multimedia keys and it connects to the computer via a PS/2 or USB connection.
Wireless Mouse
The Wireless Mouse, like the Wireless Keyboard is specifically designed for comfort and mobility. It can be positioned anywhere within a 3 meter radius of the Base Station. This maximizes the comfort of the user. In addition, the mouse contains a scrolling wheel and three programmable buttons.
Game Pad
The Game Pad consists of controllers that are specially designed for various computer games. Like the mouse and keyboard, it, too, works anywhere within a 3 meter radius of the Base Station and is designed for comfort.
Call-Waiting Modem
Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that whenever you go online, you can't receive phone calls? Well, Actiontec Electronics, Inc. designed a call-waiting feature on modems. This feature screens incoming phone calls while you are online. You can either choose to ignore the call if you feel that it is un-important, or you can choose to pick up the phone and talk with whoever is calling. Choosing to pick up the phone will not drop the Internet connection! Previously, there had been a feature on modems that would put the modem on hold.
iTunes, iMovie 2, and iDVD
Apple, Inc. recently designed the new software, iTunes, iMovie 2, and iDVD. They are the very essence of computers today!
iTunes

iTunes is a software used to operate with all sorts of MP3 functions. It can import music from CDs to MP3s and it can also create libraries of MP3s. Using iTunes, the user can listen to radio stations broadcasting anything from country to pop to jazz to classical! Most importantly, iTunes plays all the music smoothly and with a great effect!

iMovies
iMovies is a software used to make desktop movies. Users can make their own movies, and then they can add special visual and sound effects. Once finished, they can share their awesome creations with friends and family!
iDVD
iDVD allows users to make their own DVDs. The DVDs created are not some poor-quality products, but actually have many of the same features as Hollywood created DVDs! The general public can now create their very own high-quality movies!
iMac
The iMac is a user-friendly Macintosh developed by Apple, Inc. It is appealing to the general public because of its availability in spiffy colors, such as Indigo, Flower Power, Blue Dalmatian, and Graphite. In addition, it has some of Apple's software, iTunes and iMovies 2, installed. It also uses Apple's famous operating system, Mac OS X and the Apple Pro Mouse and Apple Pro Keyboard. The Apple Pro Keyboard has 108 keys, some of which include special keys that when pressed, can adjust the audio volume, can mute the speakers, and can eject CDs from the drive.
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IBM ThinkPad
The IBM ThinkPad is extremely light and portable laptops. It clocks in at only 3.1 pounds and is only 1 inch thick. It is wireless and allows for cable-free Internet connectivity! This laptop computer demonstrates the modern ideology of light and portable personal computers.
The Future
Computers have already evolved so much since they were first introduced in the early 1900s. Now, computers have dramatically decreased in size and have dramatically increased in speed. However, computers will continue to evolve throughout the future of mankind. The living conditions of humans in the next few millenniums will completely depend upon the types of computer technology innovative minds come up with.
Without doubt, within the next few decades, people will be able to accomplish almost everything needed to survive without having to leave their desk. All the computers throughout the world will be connected via the Internet, which has been rightfully nicknamed the "Information Superhighway." Currently, there is a Digital Divide, or a barrier dividing those who own computers and have access to the Internet (the "haves") and those who do not own computers and who do not have Internet access (the "have notes"). As more schools and libraries are getting Internet access and as computers are becoming cheaper and cheaper, the Digital Divide will gradually disintegrate. Already, the Internet is becoming more widespread as more families and households are getting involved in the digital world. In addition to the breaching of the Digital Divide, there will be more technology to make our lives both easier and more comfortable in the future. This new technology will completely change our ways of life! Below are a few examples of the new technology that are being explored
EMERGENCE OF LAPTOPS

Laptop Computers in the K-12 Classroom
Over the past decade, many schools have investigated the educational possibilities of mobile computing. More recently, an increasing number of K-12 schools are implementing the use of laptop computers. Improvements in portable computing technology and examples of successful pilot programs using laptops and other portables have inspired many K-12 schools to consider laptops for their students.
EMERGENCE OF LAPTOPS IN SCHOOLS
Organized laptop programs in higher education date as far back as 1988 when Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, began providing notebook computers (paid for from tuition) to all incoming freshman. Now more than 50 postsecondary institutions worldwide require at least some of their students to use laptops (Brown, 1999). Throughout the 1990s, a number of private schools in the United States and abroad began requiring ownership of laptops. In 1996, inspired by the successful use of laptops in Australian schools, the Microsoft Corporation and Toshiba began one of the most high-profile programs now underway, currently known as Microsoft's Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL) Program (Healey, 1999). Technology corporations, such as NetSchools (http://www.studypro.com/), NoteSys Inc. (http://www.notesys.com/), Apple (http://www.apple.com/education/), and others are promoting the use of laptops in K-12 education, providing hardware packages for schools, and in some cases, software and technical support as well.
TRANSITIONS TO LAPTOPS
How are schools integrating laptops into their technology infrastructure? Microsoft commissioned an ongoing study of Anytime Anywhere Learning, published as the Rockman Report. In their study, Rockman (1998) identified five models of laptop use currently in place at the K-12 level:
* Concentrated-each student has his or her own laptop for use at home or in school
* Class set-a school-purchased classroom set is shared among teachers
* Dispersed-in any given classroom, there are students with and without laptops
* Desktop-each classroom is permanently assigned a few laptops for students to share
* Mixed-some combination of the above models.
DOES RESEARCH SUPPORT THE USE OF LAPTOPS?
Several studies suggest educational benefits related to laptop use. Specific benefits noted include increased student motivation (Gardner 1994, Rockman, 1998), a shift toward more student-centered classroom environments (Stevenson, 1998; Rockman, 1998), and better school attendance than students not using laptops (Stevenson, 1998). In his study of a laptop pilot program in Beaufort, South Carolina, Stevenson (1998) also reported that students with laptops demonstrated a "sustained level of academic achievement" during their middle school years, as opposed to students not using laptops who tended to decline during this same period. He also noted that these academic benefits were most significant in at-risk student populations.
In their study of laptop use in middle school science classrooms, Fisher and Stolarchuk (1998) found that those laptop classrooms in which skills and the process of inquiry were emphasized had the most positive impact on student learning and attitudes. According to Rockman, a majority of teachers in laptop schools reported an increase in both cooperative learning and project-based instruction. Other research has not supported the educational benefits of laptop use.
Laptop Lessons: Exploring the Promise of One-to-One ComputinWhen Maine Governor Angus King recently proposed using the state's $50 million surplus to outfit every seventh- and eighth-grade student and teacher in the state with a laptop computer, the phrase "laptop learning" became headline news across the nation. And when the New York City Board of Education approved a plan to provide the city's fourth-grade students and teachers with notebook computers next year-and eventually deploy some 850,000 portable devices to all students, teachers, and administrators in the system-it confirmed that laptop programs have indeed become a full-fledged movement.
The larger premise of the laptop program, however, is that one-to-one computing will ultimately revolutionize the way teachers teach and the way students learn-a desirable and even essential outcome for the digital age. Here, we look at what we know about laptop learning so far-and what challenges schools just starting out can expect to encounter.
Teaching with laptops – introduction

New technology, such as the laptop computer, benefits science educators in two major ways. Technology expands our choices for teaching and facilitating learning in science, and it also provides opportunities to reflect on effective teaching practice. The 1999 Toshiba/NSTA Laptop Learning Challenge precipitated descriptions of the many ways teachers integrate lightweight portable computers in K–12 science and mathematics, in both schools and informal science education settings. Twenty exemplary lessons were selected to share through the NSTA Web site and a CD-ROM. If you are a science methodology instructor, an in-service professional development facilitator, or a teacher reflecting on your own teaching practice, the following ideas and activities can help make constructive use of the exemplary lessons.


Learning with laptops – New tools create new oppurtinity

Latest News and Reports (5-7-2006)
Working Less to Work Smarter
I've been thinking quite a bit about change, schools, and information technology. My developing "theory" on this subject can be found on this wiki.
Following are some email messages I wrote on this subject as part of a listserve discussion.
The New York Times had an article about airline seats on April 24th. The following two sentences caught my attention.
"With new materials and modern designs, manufacturers are creating seats with an increasingly smaller profile to provide more legroom. Airlines, however, are using the additional space to squeeze in more rows."
Anyone for a four day work week?
IMPORTANCE OF LAPTOPS

Student on a Budget

Laptops are delicate and you'll probably want to purchase new, so consider saving money by buying less expensive processors like Intel's Celeron or AMD's Athlon chips. Buy a laptop with as little RAM as possible from the retailer and shop for good deals on RAM separately. A good-sized hard drive with a read-only CD-ROM and DVD-ROM will get you by until you can afford to upgrade.
Professional
Consider a serious laptop computer that you can use at work and on the go. Laptops can be heavy, so if you plan to carry it around with you, look for something in the 4 to 6 lb range. Be sure to buy a laptop with a newer Pentium-M or Centrino processor to prolong your battery life.
Gamer
Buying a laptop to play video games with? Look for a graphics card that comes with its own Video RAM to boost the reality-factor and a screen that is at least 15 inches. You'll need plenty of RAM, at least 512MB and the fastest processor you can afford. If you'll be carrying it with you frequently, look for a laptop that weighs 4 to 6 lbs for the best blend of size and portability.


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New Laptop Technology You Need To Know
(Before Buying Your Next Laptop)
Laptop or notebook computer technology is advancing at a blistering speed. Ferrari fast. So fast that by the time you purchase your new laptop - it's probably already obsolete or out of date. A sobering thought considering the hefty prices you have to pay for a high-end laptop.
What's the ordinary laptop buyer to do?
What you really have to keep in mind are the outcomes of all this new technology. Basically, these new technologies have made laptops smaller, faster and more powerful. With every new improvement the laptop is closing the gap between its main rival - the desktop computer.Some major computer makers are taking note of this trend towards more powerful, smaller computers. Even the desktop computer is morphing! Just look at the sleek design of the new Apple iMac G5 - gone is the bulky tower - in its place is a well designed desktop computer that's almost a laptop!In order for you to tech-proof your next laptop purchase, here's a quick run down of some recent Notebook Developments:
PCI Express
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express is a new standard for expansion cards that comes in different versions. Presently, we have the x16 and x1 lanes, which will be followed by x4 and x8 versions. It offers increased bandwidth for example, x1 lane offers 500MB/sec instead of just 133MB/sec for PCI.
All computers, including laptops have different buses, (collection of wires) that transmit data from one component to another.
PCI Express is a great improvement and will make your laptop faster.
Graphics Card
These are always improving. A Graphics Card handles the graphics or visuals on your notebook. If 3D graphics and games is a pastime - you will want to buy the highest quality system. Some of the higher end products are:
 ATi Mobility Radeon 9800, X800, and FireGL V3200 or
 Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900.
If you can, go with a NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 graphics card or for the real game diehards - wait for the debut of NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 that features NVIDIA's TurboCache technology.
64 Bit Laptops
Most systems today run on the 32 Bit System. Keep in mind, the major difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit system is the amount of memory that they support. Around 4 GB for 32-bit and 8 GB and up for the 64-bit. Right now - Intel, Apple, and AMD all offer 64-bit systems.
Do you need all this memory? No, for the average laptop user it amounts to overkill. However, if you're interested in gaming, desktop publishing, or the graphic arts you will benefit from 64-bit technology.
Dual Core Notebooks
Two is better than one!
Dual core laptops are now on the market. The gaming industry is the starting point for many of these advanced systems.
For example, the British Laptop maker Rockdirect now produces Xtreme 64, a gaming laptop with AMD’s new dual core Athlon 64 X2 processor. This same laptop also sports the ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT graphics card that features 16 pixel pipelines,an industry first for notebooks.
Built-in Cellular Modem
Most high-end laptops now come with an integrated tri-mode 802.11a/b/g for wireless WI-FI connections. Some recent models, like the Sony's New Ultra-Portable VAIO VGN-T350P, are raising the bar - it has the worlds first 'Built-in Cellular Modem'. You can use your cell phone to connect to the Internet. This may be a great advantage since finding a 'Hot Spot' in some parts of the world can still be difficult.
Computer Notebooks from Acer
Acer notebooks or laptops come from the large Acer Group of Taiwan, which is one of the world's biggest computer makers. Founded by Taiwanese tycoon Stan Shih in 1976, Acer is better known for its peripherals (monitors and scanners) than it is for its notebook computers.
However, it does produce some high top quality notebooks that are listed in this Notebook Guide. Mainly, the very popular Acer - TravelMate, a top rated tablet pc that makes many top ten lists. These very versatile tablet laptops are worth considering if you do a lot of note taking – especially popular with 'in-the-field' professionals, like salesmen, real estate agents and so on.
Maybe not exactly the strangest site you will see while checking out various laptops, but it will definitely be one of the most pleasing!
Computer Laptops from Dell
Dell is perhaps one of the most recognized brand names in notebooks or laptops. It has established a well earned reputation for a quality product at a reasonable price.
Dell laptops or notebooks should be on every one's list. If you're considering buying a notebook don't rule out Dell. The company was founded by Michael Dell in 1984, and produces some top rated laptops that made it into this Notebook Guide. Dell introduced its first notebook computer in 1989.
First, there is the 'Thin and Light' entry Dell Inspiron 700m, a very popular choice for many students or college students. Lightweight and high performance makes it a top choice for best student laptop.
Thin and light class notebook, the Dell Inspiron 700m is very popular with college students:
Dell Inspiron 700m
Second, there is Dell Inspiron 9200, a desktop replacement
Desktop Replacement
Dell Inspiron 9200
Third, a very powerful Gaming laptop
Dell Inspiron XPS Extreme
Fourth, there is the highly rated yet very affordable or budget laptop - the Dell Inspiron 1000. You can check this laptop out by clicking the link below:
Budget Notebook
Dell Inspiron 1000
10% off top DELL memory upgrades
Computer Laptops from HP Compaq
First, Compaq was started in 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto. These three managers left Texas Instruments and started their own computer company - Compaq which shipped in 1983, more than 53,000 portable PCs.
It quickly established itself as the technology leader in America and around the world. It merged with the Hewlett-Packard Corporation in May 3, 2002 – creating a very powerful world-class company and computer maker.
The Hewlett-Packard Company was founded by William Hewlett and David Packard in Palo Alto, CA in 1939. Its first product was a device or oscillator for measuring sound, one of its first clients was Walt Disney Studios.
Perhaps, better known for its innovative printers and office equipment, Hewlett-Packard entered the computer field with its first personal computer which was called the Touchscreen 150.
The company quickly grew and now HP sells well over 10,000 different elctronic and computerproducts, and has gained a well earned reputation for its quality engineering, as well as for its superior products.

Computer Laptops from IBM!
IBM has become another word for 'professional business quality' in the world. It stands for top quality products that have earned its place in the business world. IBM brings to mind the best professional laptops that the demanding business arena has to offer.
IBM has a long history; it has its roots in the 1910 census in America. It was original known as CTR Computing Tabulating Recording and didn't become known as IBM International Business Machines until 1920, but it had this name in Canada since 1917.
In the early days, IBM produced ways of computing or tabulating worker's time records, company inventories, census gathering, etc.
IBM notebooks or laptops fall into the same category; they point to the best in business notebooks and have the same IBM quality that makes them so popular.
There are many models that are worth your consideration if you're looking at purchasing an IBM laptop or notebook.
IBM was in the news recently because of its deal with China's Largest PC maker - Lenovo, which acquired IBM's personal computer operations.
One of the most highly rated by this Notebook Guide and by many other sites around the net is the ThinkPad T43. It is the latest offering from IBM/Lenovo and has many factors that make it not only the top business notebook on the market but maybe the BEST notebook on the market period.
IBM produces some very highly rated notebooks or laptops. Among their
stand-outs are the top rated IBM notebooks in this simple Notebook Guide.
They are in the 'Ultraportable' Class - IBM ThinkPad X40
In the 'Thin and Light' you have the IBM ThinkPad T42
and the newest IBM ThinkPad T43.
There is definitely something to be said about all things black. This notebook not only looks like the perfect package - it is the perfect package. If you're thinking of purchasing a laptop - give the T43 some deep thought. And when you're done that - think about it some more and if you can just go out and test drive the IBM T43. You won't be able to keep your hands off it for long!
You can't go wrong with an IBM notebook. Check out the whole range of IBM laptops here: IBM Notebooks
Seven Factors You Must Check Before Buying Your Notebook Computer
It is estimated that over 42 million computer notebooks will be produced this year (2005). The market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at a rate of 20% each year according to Taiwanese notebook makers.
And they should know - they make 70% of these notebooks or their components for such major players as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway. The popularity of notebook computers seems to be increasing; they are popping up everywhere -on TV News Desks, in sitcoms, in movies, or in your friend's lap!
They may get even popular as hundred of millions of old desktop PCs are retired in the coming years - one can only guess how many of these old bulky machines will be replaced by these, sleek, sexy up-starts.
So if you are planning to replace your dusty old PC with one of these very capable compact notebook computers - do yourself a favor -consider these Seven major factors BEFORE you buy your Notebook:
1. Size - This is one case where size does matter! It's the main reason you're considering buying a notebook or laptop in the first place. You want something that's lightweight, portable and versatile; to carry on your next business trip, to take to class, or to move from room to room in your home with ease.
Choosing the right size notebook or laptop for your needs does take some consideration. However, your job is made easier because notebooks and laptops have been categorized for you. They are grouped according to size. Here's a quick rundown:
 Tablet PC (smallest) Size of a paper tablet or notepad, less than 3 pounds.
 Ultra Portable (small) <11" x <10” Less than 1.3 inches thick, usually less than 4 pounds.
 Thin and Light (mid-size) 11-14" x <11” 1 to 1.4 inches thick, from 5 to 7 pounds.
 Desktop Replacements (largest) >13" x >11" More than 1.5 inches, more than 7 pounds and up
Please note - the weight here is without the power adapters and accessories
that may be needed with your notebook. Add 2 to 3 pounds for these extras.
2. Hard Drive and others - What size hard drive do you need?
Drives are increasing as notebooks become more compact and more powerful. You'll need only a 20GB or 30GB for most tasks on your notebook. If you handle large graphics or large amount of files (DVDs, M3Ps, etc.) you need more - 60 to 100GB or higher.
Depending on your needs or purpose you will need other Drives such as DVD/CD. You will need a CD-ROM for installing. And a CD-RW drive for burning your own CDs if that's one of the tasks you want your notebook to do. Other options are available -- many notebooks can access or use external drives for data storage, cd burning, etc.
Tip: Many notebooks come pre-loaded with software programs installed, which is great, but these programs take up space on your hard drive -so check to see the size of your 'actual' hard drive you have for your own storage space!
3. Processor - The Processor or CPU is the heart of your notebook or computer. It does the processing and applications. Most people prefer Intel Pentium Processors; the higher the number the faster it will process!
Go with a Pentium 4 - M if you can. It is very expensive but it's extremely fast and permits a longer battery life. May also want to check out the new Intel's Sonoma chipset, this platform will become standard on many high end notebooks soon!
Speed is how fast your computer can process data and perform your tasks. The faster the better! Latest models get up to a blazing 3.6 GHz or more.
Tip: You might also want to check the rotational speed of your notebook's hard disk as it can affect performance a 5,400rpm notebook disk is much faster than a 4,200rpm model. How fast the disk spins, will also determine the performance level of your notebook.
4. RAM (random-access-memory). This is what the computer uses to run applications and data on your operating system. It's generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other operating systems in Windows or Mac.
Video RAM or memory - if game playing or heavy graphic work is the main purpose of your notebook, checks the video RAM. With each new generation of Notebook Technology - RAM keeps increasing, up to 2GB of RAM in some machines!
5. Connections - Until all major connections on notebooks become standard, and they will over time - you have to check the connections of the notebook you're buying. If traveling and portability is the main reason for buying your notebook - make sure it has the connections you need.
Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity, also known as 802.11b which transfers data wirelessly at a maximum rate of 11Mbps for up to 150 feet. There are two other ways of transferring wireless data: 802.11a up to a maximum of 54Mbps and 802.11g which is hybrid of a and b, it is also capable of 4Mbps.
Some notebooks like the Fujitsu LifeBook N6010 have a tri-mode 802.11a/b/g wireless system!
A fully loaded notebook may come with these kinds of connections:
56k Modem, up to 4 USB 2.0 ports, Internal Gigabit LAN, 15-Pin VGA, S-Video, 25-Pin EPP/ECP, Internal 802.11g Internal Wireless LAN, Bluetooth Module and FireWire.
Tip: To avoid disappointment later, always double check these connections with your dealer before you buy your notebook computer. Plug-ins can be a problem, check this before you buy!
6. Battery Life - Check to see what the battery life of your notebook computer will be - check the cost of an extra battery or a docking station. Many notebooks come with different batteries, four cell, 6 cell, 8 cell, etc. - if battery life is important to your needs, get the largest battery.
In most cases, it's best to buy an extra battery if you will do a lot of traveling or 'in-the-field' work.
Battery life is gradually increasing, 2 or 3 hours is common. 5 or 6 hours is considered good. General rule of thumb-- the bigger the notebook, the lower is the battery life.
7. Price/Deal - Shop around before you buy! Old cliches are cliches for a good reason - they hold a lot of truth. Shop around and check out the reviews and prices at many stores, online and offline. Do your homework, read reviews, check out online forums - these places will turn up any problems of a particular model.
Unless you have a local reputable dealer that gives great service and support as well as great warranties or guarantees, it may be best to buy directly from the manufacturer or Notebook Company.
Why?
Usually, factory outlet prices are the lowest prices you will find. The dealer also has his/her reputation on the line, if you can't get quality service from the primary dealer or maker -- you may have a better recourse or action to take than if you're dealing with a reseller out in the boondocks.
The primary producer or maker will have more to lose! So go direct - if you can and buy from the maker's factory or online site.. However, don't always be concerned about getting the best deal or bargain. As well as the price, support and customer service is also extremely important - especially if you're considering buying a notebook online. Check out the warranty, Mr. Murphy. Things do go wrong - just make sure your have a recourse that delivers satisfaction.
So remember these seven factors when buying your computer notebook. If you have to - list them by using your fingers - Size, Hard Drive, Processor, RAM, Connections, Battery Life, and Price. Just be careful how you point those fingers as you list off the different factors before your dealer; armed with the knowledge above there shouldn't be any need for unnecessary rudeness or surprises!
Finding The Right Size Notebook For Your Needs
This is one case where size does matter! It's the main reason you're considering buying a notebook or laptop in the first place. You want something that's lightweight, portable and versatile; to carry on your next business trip, to take to class, or to move from room to room in your home with ease.
As technical specs and capabilities of notebooks improve and even out in the coming years - it may be the only main factor you will have to consider before you buy your notebook.
However, there's a wide variation in the models, sizes, and capabilities of present day notebooks so you do have to figure out which size notebook is best suited for your needs.
To make your job easier, computer notebook or laptops are classified into different groups; here's a quick rundown:
 Tablet PC (smallest) Size of a paper tablet or notepad, less than 3 pounds.
 Ultra Portable (small) <11" x <10” Less than 1.3 inches thick, less than 4 pounds.
 Thin and Light (mid-size) 11-14" x <11” 1 to 1.4 inches thick, from 5 to 7 pounds.
 Desktop Replacements (largest) >13" x >11" More than 1.5 inches, more than 7 pounds and up
And here's a brief summation of each group:
Tablet PC - If size and weight is a problem for you - you just won't or can't carry around anything weighting over 2 or 3 pounds then you should consider the extremely lightweight Tablet PC. It's the lightest PC you will find.
These have a niche all their own and is very suited for "road warriors" and "corridor warriors". You get a fully equipped PC in the form of a letter sized notepad that you can carry to meetings. Some have special digital pens that you can write with - very practical for students, salespeople, teachers, researchers, engineers, health related workers, and other people who find a notebook too cumbersome in a meeting or office setting.
Tablet PC can come in two designs - 'Convertible' and 'Slate' Models.
In the 'convertible' model - a small tablet-sized screen folds over like a notebook with an integrated keyboard and in the 'slate' model - the screen can be removed from the keyboard. Most models carry Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
All the major companies such as Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Toshiba and
Acer...produces Tablet PC's.
Pros - Very lightweight, easy to carry anywhere and great for PowerPoint presentations!
Cons - Don't have all the features of a larger notebook, hard to read outdoors in bright light.

Ultraportable Notebooks
Just as the name implies, these notebooks are very portable. Designed to be easily carried anywhere - airports, meetings, hotels, etc. -- its light weight makes it a favorite of the business traveler. Even though it doesn't have the full functionality of the larger notebooks. If you do a lot of traveling and don't want to lug around a heavier notebook - the UltraPortable is for you.
Pros - It's Portability, easy to conceal (theft is a problem with most notebooks), excellent for the business traveller.
Cons - Many don't have an internal optical drive or floppy drives so you many have to carry these external drives or a docking bay - add 2 or 3 pounds for these extra devices. Don't have all the functions of larger notebooks.
Thin and light Notebooks
Thin and Light Notebooks offer more features or functions than the Utraportables. Thus, they are somewhat heavier and bulkier. If size and weight is not a consideration for your needs - you should try a Thin and Light Notebook.
Most of the better models comes with a Intel Pentium 4 or 4-M. Battery life should be a consideration and the new Pentium 4-M uses less power and gives longer life to your batteries.
Keep in mind the traveling weight of these notebooks, if you have to carry external drives, docking ports, etc. will add 2 or 3 pounds to your weight..
Pros: Lightweight and portable, more functions than an UtraPortable.
Cons: Theft may be a problem (keep an eye on it, make sure it's insured, stencil (your ID on it!), less functions than a full desktop replacement.
Best Notebooks For Students and Why
Students want a laptop or notebook that's lightweight, yet sturdy enough to take a good pounding! They need a notebook that's comfortable enough to lug from class to class - so weight and size is an issue. It has to be small enough to fit comfortable in a backpack or in your arms. Yet, the student notebook or laptop must have great battery life and performance.

Depending on your budget, student laptops also have to be inexpensive.
In other words, the ideal student notebook must have great portability, performance and battery life, yet be lightweight and relatively inexpensive. The class of notebooks best suited to meet all those demands falls in the 'thin and light' and the 'ultraportable' categories of laptops or notebooks.

Some of the best students notebooks are:

 IBM ThinkPad X40
Great student notebook with superior keyboard, sleek style and IBM quality, light and ultra-portable. At 3.2 pounds and very professional this IBM notebook should be on every student's list.
 Panasonic ToughBook Y2
May be on the expensive size for some students, but the Panasonic ToughBook Y2 is a fully packed notebook with solid performance and great battery life at 5 hours and is really light at 3.3 pounds. Should be considered.
 Toshiba - Portégé M200
Those students looking for a Tablet PC for convenient Note Taking should look at the Toshiba Portégé M200. It runs quiet and cool, and is a versatile tablet/laptop combination with an excellent keyboard design.
 IBM ThinkPad T42
Great 'thin and light' notebook, again with the IBM quality that also makes it a perfect choice for the busy college student. Lightweight and portable, in a 5 pound package.
 Dell Inspiron 700m
Dell may be the best choice for a student looking for a relatively
cheap notebook computer or laptop. Good performance at a reasonable
price. Weight at 4.2 pounds.

Refurbished or Used Laptop or Notebook Computer

Students (and parents) should not rule out a used or refurbished laptop or notebook computer. Some great deals can be found, check around computer shops in your area or check online places like Amazon.com which sell relatively cheap refurbished notebooks. refurbished laptops

Reasons all students should have a laptop or notebook computer

Laptops are convenient and useful for note taking, writing compositions, and gathering knowledge and data from the Internet. To remain ompetitive
in a very competitive world - students who have a laptop or notebook computer is at a greater advantage than those without one.

Many parents and students spend 10's of thousands on a good education but fail to invest in a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment that may greatly influence the outcome of that high priced education. So give some serious thought to buying a student notebook or laptop.

A laptop or notebook computer will greatly increase any student's performance level. So choose wisely!
A laptop or notebook computer will greatly increase any student's performance level. So choose wisely!

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF
LAPTOPS AND DESKTOPS

Desktop computers usually come with a vertical chassis, referred to as a tower, which typically sits on the floor under a desk. A monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers are all attached to the tower separately.

Laptop computers, on the other hand, are small, battery-powered, lightweight (1-3 kg) and ideal for those who require portability, such as business people who travel or university students who could then easily move from a dorm room to a library to a lecture hall to a cafe. With a DVD player, laptops can also be used as portable entertainment systems.

Unlike a desktop setup, all accessories are integrated into the laptop (mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc) but external ones may be attached, as well. The prices for these accessories are about the same for both laptop and desktop PCs.

It should be mentioned that many of today's laptops come equipped with integrated wireless networking features (like Intel Centrino mobile technology) so that users can tap into a high-speed internet connection. The PC user must be in the range of a compatible wireless network, known as a hotspot, which is available in some hotels, airport lounges, school campuses, and cafes. Desktop computers usually come with a wired network card, but wireless cards can be purchased.

Why should I buy a laptop instead a desktop?

To insure that a laptop will work well for you, consider all of the possible ideas you have about when and where you would use it! Space considerations are always favorable for laptop use over a full sized desktop computer. If you intend for a laptop to be your only computer, and you will be using at home or in the office with no space limitations, you might want to consider a desktop computer instead. Whereas a laptop computer enables you to work when and where you want, allowing you both ease of operation and trouble free performance. Your computer should enable you to enhance your productivity and make better use of your time and you can use a laptop without being attached to a power outlet.

Why are laptops more popular
Should I buy a laptop or a desktop? Thousands of people face this dilemma every day. Information technology is not only advancing at a great pace but it is making lives better. We have been using desktops way back since 1940 when the first computer was invented. However, the increasing dependence on computers has given an impetus to develop more advanced computers like laptops or notebooks. Though desktop is the king, laptops are gaining ground these days due to its portability.

In 2000, one in 10 home computers bought worldwide was a laptop, these days it is one in five. According to the research firm Current Analysis, laptops have for the first time outsold desktops in the US in a calendar month. Current Analysis says laptops sales accounted for 53 per cent of the total personal computer market last month, up from 46 per cent during the same period last year.



Are the components in these two computers similar?

Laptops contain components that are similar to those in their desktop counterparts and perform the same functions but are miniaturised and optimised for mobile use and efficient power consumption. Laptops usually have liquid crystal displays and smaller SO-DIMM (Small Outline DIMM) chips for their RAM. In addition to a built-in keyboard, they may utilise a touchpad (also known as a trackpad) or a pointing stick for input, though an external mouse or keyboard can usually be attached.

Any computer - desktop or laptop - has the following basic components.

* Processor (the main engine of the computer)

* Memory (where the software 'brains' of the computer as well as data are stored - as long as the computer is powered ON)

* Mass Storage (where user files, application software, etc. are stored permanently - meaning, they are there regardless of whether the computer is ON or OFF)

* Removable storage (used to transfer files in and out of the computer on a need basis)

.Peripheral controller/adapter (that controls and provides all interfaces to the computer's peripheral devices including the monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, removable storage, USB ports, etc).

The difference really is in the way each of these components is designed and implemented. The constraints placed in the implementation of these components in a laptop are driven by the most desired characteristics, which are:

* It should be small - smaller the better.

* It should be light - lighter the better.

* It should be powered by a battery.

* The battery should last a long time. After all, who wants a laptop that would not run even for 5 minutes without needing to be plugged into a power outlet.

* It should not generate too much heat - you don't want to burn your lap, would you?

* It should allow the user to use floppy disks or CDs or other forms of 'removable' media so that files can be transferred in and out of the computer.

The above components are packed together in a laptop tighter than in a desktop, making laptops less rugged than desktops from a physical handling standpoint.
Surprisingly, most laptops available in the market these days offer just about all the above.

Can laptops be repaired and upgraded?

Components in a desktop computer are easier to upgrade than those in a laptop.

Until recently, laptop users were not able to upgrade any of the machine's components because it couldn't be opened - what you bought was what you bought. Some savvy users were able to add more RAM, but that was about it. This remains true today except for higher-end gaming laptops that let users upgrade the video card whenever faster ones become available.

Companies such as Alienware allow gamers to do it themselves, while Dell's XPS gaming laptops require a technician.
When it comes to repair, it normally costs more to fix a laptop than a desktop because, as previously mentioned, components are smaller and therefore tend to be more time-consuming. In fact, some repair shops will only work on desktop computers. That said, manufacturers usually offer similar warranties for laptops and desktops and will often handle the repairs themselves.


How much does a laptop cost and what are its brands?

Desktop computers are less expensive than laptop computers. The price difference is because a laptop's components are much smaller, usually more expensive to manufacture, and more time-consuming to build into the final product. Prices range from Rs 45,000 for entry-level ones to over Ts 1.5 lakh for snazzier versions.

Laptop brands: Acer (TravelMate and Aspire), Alienware, Apple Computer (iBook and Powerbook), ASUS, Averatec, Clevo, Compaq (EVO, Armada and Presario), Dell, ECS, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett Packard, Hypersonic, IBM, NEC, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba.
Difference between Centrino (Pentium M) and Pentium IV
I have been planning to replace my old desktop PC with a new one and now I have to decide whether to go for a desktop or notebook (laptop) computer. My first preference is laptop keeping in view the kind of mobility it offers but there are other factors that I have to take of such as speed and price. Notebooks are available starting from Rs.30,000 onwards but they don’t have best processor serving it.
In recent past Intel has come up with new processors especially for notebook users so it has become diffcult to decide what to go for. I have started looking on net for information which is essential for notebook buyers to know about latest processors. This is what I have found -
• Basically there are 2 kind of processors from Intel : Penitum 4 & Pentium M (which is a mobile processor).
• Pentium M processor + Intel 855 chipset+ Intel/Pro wireless network connection makes a Centrino. Remember CENTRINO is not just a processor but a combination of all three.
• The Pentium M was built from the ground up, it is a completely new design from Intel
• Centrino uses far less power than any previous Intel processor consumes, thats why its battery life is good on notebooks which uses Centrino.
• Centrino is available in 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7GHz speeds. It has 1Mb of on-die L2 cache.
• Frequency doesn’t matter so much, as long as the chip design includes big caches and highly accurate branch prediction. The Centrino processor has met or exceeded expectations here, making notebooks based on the Mobile Pentium 4 completely unappealing for almost all practical purposes. In tests, Centrino—which is actually based on a modified Pentium III core and Pentium 4-like bus—outperformed the higher-frequency, power-hogging Pentium 4 devices hands down.
Various Responses to “Difference between Centrino (Pentium M) and Pentium IV”
 Centrino is the way to go — no doubt about it
 Centrino is a standard that specifies the 3 components that you have down, the processor, the wireless card and the chipset.
 A Centrino (acctually all Pentium - M) processor(s) save power by doing a simple thing.
 When they run on battery, they reduce their clock speed, as a result compute lesser instructions per second which saves power.
 Also the M chip is designed for laptops, which means it has lesser heating. P4’s were designed for desktops and get hotter.
 The heat factor varies from laptop to laptop as it depends on various factors that are specific to the manufacturer. But the fact remains that the M chips are cooler than the P4’s. Hope that helps.
 I have a centrino notebook and I love it. The centrino processor (or combo as you have pointed out) definitely helps in longer battery life and capturing wifi signals.
 However desktops give better performance and are more stable (less problem prone).
 I also agree for going with centrino but then why most of the distributors suggest to go for Pentium 4 and you can better find it if you go for survey………….
 I buy notebooks for our field sales personnel. The Pentium M/Centrino, with its variable speed and lower heat output along with the smaller 14″ screen (compared to the 15.4″ w-i-d-e screen), give them the longer battery life critical to their jobs.
COMPANY PROFILE OF MAJOR LAPTOP COMPANIES

HP
About us
HP is a technology company that operates in more than 170 countries around the world. We explore how technology and services can help people and companies address their problems and challenges, and realize their possibilities, aspirations and dreams. We apply new thinking and ideas to create more simple, valuable and trusted experiences with technology, continuously improving the way our customers live and work.
Fast facts

 HP was incorporated in 1939.
 Corporate headquarters are in Palo Alto, Calif.
 Mark Hurd is president and CEO.
 HP is a Fortune 11 company, with $86 billion in revenue, generating $7 billion in organic growth for fiscal year 2005.

Technology leadership

HP's three business groups drive industry leadership in core technology areas:

 The Personal Systems Group: business and consumer PCs, mobile computing devices and workstations
 The Imaging and Printing Group: inkjet, LaserJet and commercial printing, printing supplies, digital photography and entertainment
 The Technology Solutions Group: business products including storage and servers, managed services and software
Growth

HP is focused on three technology shifts that have the power to transform our customers' lives and businesses.

 Next-generation data center
 Always on, always connected mobile computing
 Ubiquitous printing and imaging
Microsoft Accessibility — Technology for EveryoneHP has collaborated with Microsoft on many accessibility projects. The nationwide network of Microsoft Accessibility Resource Centers (MARC) is one of the latest developments. These centers provide accessibility consultation to businesses, schools, and individuals looking for empowering technology solutions. HP supports the centers by providing HP desktops running Windows Vista, the next generation Windows operating system from Microsoft
PCS
About PCS

PCS: A Worldwide Leader in Technology
PCS is an innovative, international technology company formed as a result of the acquisition by the PCS Group of the PCS Personal Computing Division.
As a global leader in the PC market, we develop, manufacture and market cutting-edge, reliable, high-quality PC products and value-added professional services that provide customers around the world with smarter ways to be productive and competitive.

We base our success on our customers achieving their goals: productivity in business and enhancement of personal life.

Our company

PCS executive headquarters are in Purchase, New York, USA with principal operations in Beijing, China, and Raleigh, North Carolina, USA and an enterprise sales organization worldwide. The company employs more than 19,000 people worldwide.

In 2003, PCS introduced a self-developed collaborative application technology, which heralds the important role Lenovo is going to play in the 3C era (computer, communications and consumer electronics). These and other market-leading personal computing products catapulted Legend to a leadership position in China for eight consecutive years with over 25% market share in 2004.
Our values

Lenovo and its employees are committed to four company values that are the foundation for all that we do:
Customer service: We are dedicated to the satisfaction and success of every customer.

Innovative and entrepreneurial spirit: Innovation that matters to our customers, and our company, created and delivered with speed and efficiency.
Accuracy and truth-seeking: We manage our business and make decisions based on carefully understood facts.
Trustworthiness and integrity:

In China, PCS commands more than one-third of the PC market, covering all segments. Its leading-edge are highly acclaimed for their user-friendly, tailor-made designs and customized solutions for various customer needs, including the Tianjiao and Fengxing consumer desktops and Yangtian and Kaitian enterprise desktops. Lenovo also has a broad and expanding product line encompassing mobile handsets, servers, peripherals and digital entertainment products for the Chinese market.

Allied with IBM to Offer a Total Solutions Portfolio

Lenovo and PCS have a strategic alliance designed to provide a best-in-class experience for enterprise customers. The companies have entered into significant, long-term agreements that give customers preferred access to PCS world-class customer service organization and global financing offerings, and that enable Lenovo to take advantage of IBM's powerful worldwide distribution and sales network. Lenovo's customers are able to count on the entire IBM team – including sales, services and financing – for access to IBM's legendary end-to-end IT solutions. As part of a five-year commitment, IBM will also provide Lenovo with warranty services and offer Lenovo customers leasing and financing arrangements. Through this long-term relationship, customers will receive the best products with the lowest total-cost-of-ownership.

Company history

1980s

1981 IBM PCD introduces its first personal computer, the IBM PC.
1984 IBM PCD introduces its first portable computer, the IBM Portable PC, weighing 30 pounds.
With an initial capital outlay of only RMB200,000, (US$25,000) Lenovo’s founding chairman Liu Chuanzhi, together with 10 like-minded colleagues, launches the New Technology Developer Inc. (the predecessor of the Legend Group) funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
1986 IBM PCD announces its first laptop computer, the PC Convertible, weighing 12 pounds.
1987 IBM PCD announces the Personal System/2 personal computer.
Legend successfully rolls out the Legend Chinese-character card.
1988 Legend’s Chinese-character card receives the highest National Science-Technology Progress Award in China.
Legend Hong Kong is established.
1989 Beijing Legend Computer Group Co. is established.

1990s
1990 The very first Legend PC is launched in the market. Legend changes its role from that of an agent for imported computer products into that of a producer and seller of its own branded computer products. Legend are ratified and accepted by the China Torch Program.
1992 IBM PCD introduces ThinkPad, the industry’s first notebook with a 10.4 inch color Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display and a TrackPoint (red ball) pointing device.
Legend pioneers the home PC concept and Legend 1 + 1 home enter the Chinese marketplace.
1993 Legend enters the Pentium era, producing China’s first "586" PC. Legend establishes 1+1 retail network.
1994 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first notebook with integrated CD-ROM, the ThinkPad 755CD.
Legend is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Legend PC business division is formally established.
1995 IBM PCD introduces the “butterfly” keyboard.
IBM PCD moves from Boca Raton, Florida, to Raleigh, North Carolina.
Legend introduces the first Legend-brand server.
1996 Legend becomes the market share leader in China for the first time.
Legend introduces the first Legend brand laptop.
1997 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first notebook equipped with a DVD-ROM, the ThinkPad 770.
Legend signs an Intellectual Property agreement with Microsoft, the most valuable deal ever made in China at the time.
Legend launches the first multi-function laser printer.
1998 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first ThinkLight, a small light that illuminates the keyboard in low-light work environments, such as onboard an airplane.
The millionth Legend PC comes off the production line. Intel Chairman Andy Grove attends the ceremony, and takes the PC for Intel’s museum collection.
Legend establishes the first Legend Shop.
1999 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first mini-notebook, weighing under three pounds, with standard ports and a keyboard that is 95 percent of full-size.
IBM PCD announces its exit from the retail business.
IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first PC with an embedded security chip.
Legend becomes the top PC vendor in the Asia-Pacific region and heads the Chinese national Top 100 Electronic Enterprises ranking.
Legend launches pioneering Internet PC, with its "one-touch-to-the-net" feature, which enables millions of Chinese PC users to easily access the Internet.

2000s

2000 IBM PCD ships its 10-millionth ThinkPad notebook PC.
Legend becomes a constituent stock of the Hang Seng Index - HK.
Legend ranked in top 10 of world's best managed PC venders.
2001 An IBM notebook with an embedded security chip becomes the industry’s first notebook to be certified by the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, an industry body setting data security standards.
Legend successfully spins off Digital China Co. Ltd., which is separately listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Legend appoints Yuanqing Yang President and CEO.
Legend first introduces "digital home" concept and launches accessories-enabling PC.
2002 IBM PCD introduces ImageUltra and Rapid Restore, the first automatic data recovery technologies of their kind.
IBM PCD announces desktop PC outsourcing pact with Sanmina-SCI.
Legend launches its first technological innovation convention, “Legend World 2002,” which opens up Legend’s “Technology Era”. Legend introduces its visionary concept for the future of technological development and applications, its Collaborating Applications project, as well as its strategies for implementing Collaborating Applications.
Legend’s supercomputer, the DeepComp 1800 makes its debut. It is China’s first computer with 1,000 GFLOP (floating point operations per second) and China’s fastest computer for civilian use, ranked 43rd in the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest computers.
The mobile handset joint venture announced, marking Legend's formal entry into the mobile handset business.
2003 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first notebook with an extended battery life of up to 11 hours.
IBM PCD introduces its ThinkCentre desktop PC line.
IBM PCD introduces its Active Protection System, the industry’s first notebook with an airbag for hard drive and data protection in case the system is dropped.
IBM PCD ships its 20-millionth ThinkPad notebook PC.
Legend announces the birth of its new "Lenovo" logo to prepare for its expansion into the overseas market
Based on the collaborative application technology, Lenovo initiates IGRS Working Group, in cooperation with a few large companies and the Chinese Ministry of the Information Industry, to promote the formation of the industrial standard.
Lenovo launches a Tech RoadShow 2003 nationwide to promote Lenovo's innovation.
Lenovo successfully develops DeepComp 6800 in November 2003. It ranks 14th on the global list.
2004 IBM PCD introduces the ThinkCentre ultra small desktop PC, no larger than a box of corn flakes.
IBM PCD introduces the first notebook with an integrated fingerprint reader.
IBM PCD ships its 100-millionth PC (counting both desktop and notebook computers).
Lenovo becomes an Olympic worldwide partner. It is the first Chinese company to become a computer technology equipment partner of the IOC.
Lenovo decides to develop the rural market by launching the "Yuanmeng" PC series designed for township home users.
Lenovo and IBM announce an agreement by which Lenovo will acquire IBM’s Personal Computing Division, its global PC (desktop and notebook computer) business. The acquisition forms a top-tier (third-largest) global PC leader.
2005 Lenovo completes the acquisition of IBM's Personal Computing Division, making it a new international IT competitor and the third-largest personal computer company in the world.
Lenovo announces the closing of a US$350 million strategic investment by three leading private equity firms: Texas Pacific Group, General Atlantic LLC and Newbridge Capital LLC.
Lenovo establishes a new Innovation Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., to enable customers, business partners, solution providers and independent software vendors to collaborate on new personal computing solutions.
Lenovo introduces the industry's thinnest, lightest and most secure Tablet PC, the ThinkPad X41 Tablet.
Lenovo introduces the first widescreen ThinkPad with embedded wireless WAN, the ThinkPad Z60, available for the first time with a titanium cover.
Lenovo becomes the world's largest provider of biometric-enabled by selling its one-millionth PC with an integrated fingerprint reader.
William J. Amelio is appointed as CEO and President of Lenovo.
2006 Lenovo introduces the first dual-core ThinkPad notebook , improving productivity and extending battery life for up to 11 hours.
Lenovo technology flawlessly supports the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, supplying 5,000 desktop , 350 servers and 1,000 notebook computers. Lenovo also hosts seven Internet i.lounges for use by Olympic athletes and visitors.
The first Lenovo-branded products outside of China debut worldwide. Researchers, scientists and product design teams from around the world combine Lenovo's heritage in enterprise and consumer PC technology to design the Lenovo 3000 product line, which features new desktop and notebook models specifically designed to provide worry-free computing to the small business market segment.
PRODUCT

IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M Laptop
Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Professional - 20 GB Hard Drive - 256 MB RAM - DVD-ROM Drive - 14.1 in Screen - Battery Life: 3 Hrs - 4.9 lbs
Overall Product Rating:
Price Range: $600 to $1,900 at 2 stores

Details
You will love the reliable and affordable IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M laptop computer. The IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M features: 20 GB hard drive, 14.1” XGA display, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional operating system, DVD-ROM optical drive, 16-bit Sound Blaster compatible audio controller, and 56k modem. The IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M laptop computer handles all of your personal and professional needs.


Reliable notebooks


















Company data is not just important. It's priceless. When viruses attack or systems fail, the cost in lost data and productivity can be immeasurable. Only Think brand PCs offer ThinkVantage™ Technologies such as the Active Protection System™ and its "airbag-like" feature that can help protect your hard drive from falls on select ThinkPad models. Or Rescue and Recovery™: Just press the blue ThinkVantage button to get back lost data when you have operating system failure. It's your virus recovery button.


Questions and answers

Who can I speak with in order to determine what kind of computer system I need?

When you call Lenovo Direct at 1-866-96-THINK (1-866-968-4465), your call will be routed to the representative most qualified to assist you.

How will my call be handled by Lenovo Direct?

When you call Lenovo Direct at 1-866-968-4465 (1-866-96-THINK), you will be prompted to select the option that identifies the subject of your inquiry, so that we can connect you to the representative that can assist you.

How can I get technical support?

Technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week either online and via phone.
For online support visit Lenovo Support

By phone, contact our service provider, the PCS PC Helpcenter at 1-800-772-2227. Please have your system's model number available so that your call can be directed to the most appropriate technical specialist. The model number is printed on your system near the system's serial number - here's an example: 2645-9ZU

I need a manual. How do I get a replacement?
If you no longer have the manual that was shipped with your product, you can get a replacement.

You can either get a replacement manual online or call 1-800-879-2755 (8:30am to 7:00pm EST, Monday - Friday)

Some personal computers have the manual pre-installed on the hard drive. If you prefer a printed copy, please contact our service provider, the PCS PC Helpcenter at 1-800-772-2227.

How do I order parts?

If you know the part number, and you are ready to buy
If you want to search for the part.
If you want to browse all the available upgrades, accessories and parts.

How do I file a complaint?

Lenovo Direct takes great care in all of its communication with customers. Should something occur during your communication with us, which you find unacceptable, every effort will be made to resolve the situation to your satisfaction. If, however, you still wish to file a formal complaint, simply call 1-866-428-4465 (1-866-42-THINK) and select the Customer Service option.



Gartner research shows that the annualized cost of a PC represents less than 20 percent of the annual total cost of ownership. ThinkVantage Technologies address the other 80% by helping improve productivity and efficiency as you deploy, connect, protect, support, and dispose of your company's PCs.


ThinkCentre™ systems.
The need to protect data stored and accessed through PCs has never been greater. By integrating select Lenovo PCs with ThinkVantage Technologies into your compliance programs, you have more tools to help you manage the risk of compromised data.


DELL
Company Overview

Dell is among the world's leading computer manufacturers that has transformed and diversified into variety of business segments over the years. Products range from Dell PowerEdge servers, Power Vault, Dell EMC storage systems as well as PowerConnect switches for corporate clients. For individuals and professional customers products range from Dell Precision workstations, OptiPlex desktops, Dimension desktops, Inspiron and Latitude notebooks. Apart from these core products, the company also offer products and services range including printers, projectors, Axim handhelds, and other accessories. More recently, the company has announced intentions to explore LCD television/computer monitors as well as digital music players.

Spanning over 20 years, the company has always been associated with designing, manufacturing and customizing products and services to satisfy a diversified range of customers including individual customers to corporate and retailing businesses. The company's philosophy to deal with customers one-on-one has become a management model for other companies. Having gained the market leadership position in computer products and services, Dell's team have always been careful in sustaining its marketing strategy of providing standard-based computing solutions (Official Website 2004).
Today Dell is the third largest computer manufacturer in the world. On January 2004 Dell reports net revenue approximately $41,444 millions and 46000 employees.
History

Michael Dell, the founder and chairman of Dell.
Michael Dell, while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin, founded the company as "PC's [sic] Limited" with just $1000, in his room at Dobie, an off campus dorm, in 1984 to sell IBM-compatible computers built from stock components. He founded the company on the principle that by selling personal computer systems directly to customers, PC's Limited could best understand their needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs.
Dell History
1984-Michael Dell founds Dell Computer Corporation
1985-Company introduces the first computer system of its own design; the Turbo, featuring Intel 8088 processor running at eight megahertz
1987-Dell is first computer systems company to offer next-day, on-site product service
-International expansion begins with opening of subsidiary in United Kingdom
1988-Dell conducts initial public offering of company stock, 3.5 million shares at $8.50 each
1990-Manufacturing center in Limerick, Ireland, opened to serve European, Middle Eastern and African markets
1991-Introduces its first notebook computer
1992-Dell included for first time among Fortune 500 roster of world's largest companies
1993-Dell joins ranks of the top-five computer system makers worldwide
-
-Subsidiaries in Australia and Japan are company's first entries into Asia-Pacific region
1995-$8.50 shares of Dell stock worth $100 on presplit basis
1996-Dell opens original Asia Pacific manufacturing center in Penang, Malaysia
-
-Customers begin buying Dell computers via Internet at www.dell.com
-Dell begins major push into network-server market
-Company added to Standard & Poor's 500 stock index
1997-Dell ships its 10-millionth computer system
-Per-share value of common stock reaches $1,000 on presplit basis
-Dell introduces its first workstation systems
-Dell launches its U.S. Consumer business
1998-Company expands manufacturing facilities in the Americas and Europe, and opens a production and customer center in Xiamen, China
-Dell introduces its PowerVault storage products
1999-Dell opens second major U.S. location in Nashville, Tenn.
-Dell opens manufacturing facility in Eldorado do Sul, Brazil, to serve Latin America
-Dell introduces "E-Support Direct from Dell" online technical support
2000-Company sales via Internet reach $50 million per day
-For the first time, Dell is No. 1 in worldwide workstation shipments
-Dell introduces PowerApp appliance servers
-Dell ships its one millionth PowerEdge server
-
2001-For the first time, Dell ranks No. 1 in global market share
-Dell is No. 1 in the United States for standard Intel architecture server shipments
-Dell introduces PowerConnect network switches
-
2002-Dell names its Austin Manufacturing Campus the Topfer Manufacturing Center
-Dell ships its 2 millionth port in the PowerConnect line of network switches
-U.S. consumers choose Dell as their No. 1 computer systems provider
-Dell ships its first "blade" server, enters the handheld market with the Axim X5, introduces a standards-based point-of-sale offering for retail customers and enters the projector market with the introduction of the 3100MP projector
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2003-Dell introduces printers for businesses and consumers
-Dell launches Dell Recycling to enable customers to recycle or donate to charity computer equipment from any manufacturer
-The name change to Dell Inc. is official, reflecting the evolution of the company to a diverse supplier of technology products and services
-Dell enters consumer electronics, a natural extension of the company's existing product portfolio that provides customers with a single resource for consumer technology needs
2004-Kevin Rollins becomes Dell's next chief executive officer
-Dell announces third U.S. manufacturing facility in North Carolina
2005-Dell tops list of "America's Most Admired Companies" in Fortune Magazine
-Opens third major U.S. manufacturing location in Winston- Salem, North Carolina
2006-Dell ships more than 10 million systems in a single quarter (Q4, FY06) for the first time in its history

Products
A Dell Optiplex desktop computer.


A Dell Inspiron consumer laptop PC.
Dell uses several brand-names for its product ranges, including:
• OptiPlex for office desktop computer systems
• Dimension for consumer Desktop computer systems
• Latitude for commercially-focused laptops
• Inspiron for consumer laptops
• Precision for workstation systems and high-performance laptops
• PowerEdge for larger corporate servers
• PowerVault for direct-attach and some network-attached storage (NAS)
• Dell EMC for storage area networks
• XPS for enthusiast/high-performance systems
• Axim for PDAs utilizing Microsoft's Windows Mobile
• Dell Digital Jukebox (DJ) MP3 Players
• Dell monitors LCD/ plasma TVs and projectors for HDTV and monitor use
• Dell On Call - extended support services (mainly for the removal of spyware and of viruses)
On Dell's Windows machines the manufacturer bundles a large quantity of software. Some have accused Dell of shipping spyware, specifically Myway Search Assistant and claim that its technical support team have instructions not to support its de-installation. Although the Dell Support Forum provides instructions for removing this software,[4] they seem extremely complicated. One cannot uninstall the software using the Microsoft Windows "Add or Remove Programs" utility.Dell openly supported offering Apple Computer's new Intel version of its Mac OS X operating system, but to this point Apple has stated the OS will only run on Macintosh machines, and will not agree to licensing Mac OS X to Dell.
Business model
Dell sells all its products both to consumers and corporate customers, using a direct-sales model via the Internet and the telephone network. Dell also showcases its consumer-oriented products at kiosks in major shopping malls. Dell maintains a negative cash conversion cycle through use of this model. The Internet has significantly enhanced Dell’s business model, making it easier for customers to contact Dell directly. Other computer manufacturers, including Gateway and Compaq, have attempted to adapt this same business model, but due to timing and retail channel pressures, they have not achieved the same success as Dell.
Marketing
Dell advertisements have appeared in several types of media including television, the Internet, magazines, catalogs and in newspapers. Dell constantly lowers product prices at all times of the year, offering free bonus products (such as Dell printers) and free shipping to encourage more sales. Recently, Dell became the lowest-price major computer-manufacturer in the United States. To maintain its low prices, Dell continues to accept most of the purchases via the Internet and the telephone network, and to move its customer-care division to India.
Competition
Dell's major competitors include Apple, Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, Packard Bell, Sun Microsystems, Gateway/Emachines, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. Enthusiast market competition takes place with Alienware (now a Dell division), Falcon Northwest, Voodoo PC, WidowPC, and other manufacturers. In 2004, Dell had a 17.9% share of the worldwide personal-computer market, compared to HP with 15.8%. By leveraging its business model, Dell attempts to undercut competitors and offer consumers a more attractive choice of personal computers and other equipment. In August 2003, Dell lowered product prices by 22% in an attempt to generate more sales, however this disappointed shareholders, sending Dell shares down by 2% in late Wall-Street trading amid fears of a sector-wide slump.
Awards

Dell has been recognized by some of America's leading multicultural groups for our diversity efforts:
Balancing Liquidity, Profitability and Growth
Dell's high return to shareholders has been the result of a focused effort over time to balance growth with profitability and liquidity. Dell has consistently led its largest competitors in each of those categories.

Dell Financials

(in millions, except per-share data) FY'071 FY'06 Change


Revenue $14,216 $13,386 6%
Operating Income $949 $1,174 (19%)
Net Income $762 $934 (18%)
Earnings Per Share $0.33 $0.37 (11%)
Days supply in inventory 5 4
Annual Financial Highlights


(in millions, except per-share data) FY062 FY053 FY04 FY03 FY024


Net Revenue $55,908 $49,205 $41,444 $35,404 $31,168
Operating Income $4,789 $4,254 $3,544 $2,844 $2,271
Net Income $3,825 $3,323 $2,645 $2,122 $1,780
Earnings Per Share $1.56 $1.29 $1.01 $0.80 $0.65
Closing Stock Price $29.26 $41.06 $33.44 $23.86 $26.80
1 Results for the three months ended May 5, 2006 include stock-based compensation expenses of $77 million net of tax, or $0.03 per share, due to the implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 123 (revised 2004), Share-Based Payments, ("SFAS 123(R)"). Dell implemented SFAS 123(R) using the modified prospective method. Accordingly, net income prior to fiscal 2007 includes only compensation expense related to restricted stock awards, but does not include stock-based compensation expense for employee stock options or the purchase discount under Dell's employee stock purchase plan.

2 Results for the fiscal year ended Feb. 3, 2006 exclude charges aggregating $442 million ($338 million of other product charges and $104 million in selling, general and administrative expenses) related to the cost of servicing or replacing certain OptiPlex™ systems that include a vendor part that failed to perform to Dell's specifications, workforce realignment, product rationalizations, excess facilities, and a write-off of goodwill recognized in the third quarter. The related tax effects of these items was $104 million. Fiscal year 2006 also excludes an $85 million income tax benefit related to a revised estimate of taxes on the repatriation of earnings under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 recognized in the second quarter.

3 Results for the year ended January 28, 2005 exclude an income tax charge of $280 million related to the repatriation of earnings under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 recorded in the fourth quarter.

4 Full-year FY '02 income/earnings data exclude a $742 million pretax charge related to job reductions, consolidation of facilities and impairment of assets.



Growth Highlights


Highlights of Dell's Stock History


Date Event Per-Share Price Presplit Stock Price


June 22, 1988 Initial Public Offering $8.50 --
April 9, 1992 Three-for-Two Split 25.81 38.72
October 27, 1995 Two-for-One Split 45.00 135.00
December 6, 1996 Two-for-One Split 56.75 340.50
July 25, 1997 Two-for-One Split 81.50 978.00
March 6, 1998 Two-for-One Split 69.25 1,662.00
September 4, 1998 Two-for-One Split 54.75 2,628.00
March 5, 1999 Two-for-One Split 43.03 4,131.00
May 5, 2006 Close of Last Quarter 25.68 2,465.28



Marketing Environment

Dell's strategy is global. It realizes that being closer to the customers is essential in carrying out its marketing strategies as well as in enabling it to build customer base. First by establishing the Internet infrastructure for booking/orders related activities it has been able to increased its customer base from existing markets. Using the same infrastructure it has been able to carry out its marketing strategies in new offices as well. However, Dell differentiate in its marketing tactics in that it believes in establishing a brick and mortar market presence. This is why the company has established sales offices and manufacturing outlets across North America, Europe, Asia and South America. This way it has been able to gauge the local customers' needs as well as services desired (Official Website 2004).
SWOT Analysis

Strenths: Dell's dynamic organizational structure allows it to achieve diversified targets. By allowing the components to directly become integrated in the manufacturing process of Dell, it has been able to reduce middle channel costs. These components, such as OEMs, CMs, logistics, system integrators, repair and support companies, component suppliers, third party HW and SW suppliers and distributors have become each of the company's manufacturing processes so that ease of provision to the customers is possible. This reverse organizational process structure differ from other industry leaders.(Kraemer and Dedrick 2004)

Weaknesses: Within the strengths lies Dell's weaknesses. Much of its strategies have to rely on the capacity and capability of these manufacturing components. Continuous updates and process improvement is required so that they can keep up with Dell's pace of development.

Opportunities: Having established an integrative and virtual network, Dell has been able to achieve the high level of corporate outcome that challenged most of the industry leaders. The established value web corporate model have also allow Dell to have global wide access to customers and market. Reaching any niche market in any continent is therefore not a problem for Dell's marketers.

Threats: However, due to the integration of components in Dell's organization structure, Dell compete not only compete at the final product level but also at the suppliers level. Third party software and software for example have great competition for price and product categorization which could eventually affect Dell's position in the market.
Marketing Strategy
Product: Dell's unique approach to manufacturing separates the different processes so that Dell is not reliant on singular production or supplier's chain for equipment production. Though there is no segregation of the different products and services but nevertheless in separating the components enabled it to target the customers based on the regions in which the products are manufactured. By assingning each regionalized production center particular component for production not only have diversified the risk of concentration of labor and production costs but also depending on particular infrastructure.
Price: For the above reason Dell's product pricing reflect the affordability of the local consumers. For example basing plants in Xiamen, China Dell has been able to provide products and services at the local prices without iincurring additional costs to price. Price reasonability and the availability of support, after sales services and parts have alleviate Dell's position from others.

Place: For this reason, Dell has been able to affect the location strategy aspect of its marketing campaign. As Dell's products are always available at the nearest dealers customers develop trust for the "local Dell" thereby achieving the objective of gaining their trust in Dell products and services, and forming a large and diversified consumer base.
Promotion:
Dell in the past have not concentrated on extensive marketing campaigns but this revolutionarized in 1999 when Dell changed its tactics by engaging in extensive marketing campaigns. The "Be Direct" attitude has changed the way consumer view Dell as the local producers. They also tend to have exclusive trust in exploiting the company as evidence from the customer from UK who complaint against Dell's promotional campaign, that the company does not follow its promise. However, apart from the ad hoc mishap in its marketing campaign Dell has been successful in its promotions. Yet, it is time again to revise this campaign as many of its rival is begining to follow the same trend ("Dell Launches New Consumer Advertising Campaign" 1999).
Positioning and Target Market: What Dell needs to achieve now is to focus on positioning of its products. Earlier, Dell's consumers can be anyone and anywhere. The advantage of not categorizing customer is that it allows Dell to anticipate different kinds of consumers yet not targetting specific group of customers. In the recent years however, as Dell has grown, the customer base changed from individual professionals to corporate type. Therefore, the new positioning strategy should follow the new target market and produce accordingly. The target market feature must be changed accordingly so as to tailor products to these corporate needs.
Problems in Strategy
However, this does not mean that Dell ignore its initial consumer demographics. Instead it should clearly subdivide groups so that marketing campaigns should be followed accordingly. This way, it will not follow a single profile customer for marketing campaigns and promotions but rather segregate their features for effective marekting strategy implementation. One problem that is visible to the author in this regard is that it would need to re-evaluation of the current marketing campaign whereby the campaign addresses the consumer at large. By narrowing the scope of the current marketing strategy Dell would be able to achieve niche marketing goals.
Another problem with niche marketing in a pervasive company like Dell is that it tends to reverse some of the process of manufacturing or rather alter it. For example suppliers would have to be unique who can do mass customization at shorter production time frame as well as maintaining quality standards. Dell therefore has to focus on quality control as it gradually integrate this new marketing strategy.
ACER
About Acer

Acer ranks as the world's No. 4 branded PC vendor, designing easy, dependable IT solutions that empower people to reach their goals and enhance their life. Since spinning-off its manufacturing operation, Acer has focused on globally marketing its brand-name products: mobile and desktop PCs, servers and storage, LCD monitors and high-definition TVs, peripherals, and e-business solutions for business, government, education, and home users. Acer's unique Channel Business Model has been instrumental in the company's latest success. The model encourages partners and suppliers to collaborate in a winning formula of supply-chain management, allowing Acer to provide customers with fresh technologies, competitive pricing, and quality service. Established in 1976, Acer Inc. employs 5,600 people supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries. Revenues in 2005 reached US$9.7 billion.

Acer Group

The Acer Group comprises of several companies marketing a broad spectrum of branded IT products, e-business solutions and services. In addition it supplies multiple brands of IT products including components, software, and 3C products in Greater China.






Company Organization




Milestones

Phase 1 - 1976 - 1986: Commercialize microprocessor technology
In its first ten-year stage of development, Acer established a corporate culture based on the founders' firm belief in "the goodness of human nature." This belief was exemplified by the offering of stock to all employees. During this stage in Acer's history, the company significantly contributed to the popularization of computers in Taiwan
1976 - Acer is founded under the name Multitech, focusing on trade and product design.
1978 - Acer founds the Microprocessor Training Center, where 3,000 engineers are trained for Taiwan's information industry.
1979 - Acer designs Taiwan's first mass-produced computer for export.
1981 - Acer manufacturing operations are established in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park.
MicroProfessor-I debuts as Acer's first branded product.
1982 - MicroProfessor-II is unveiled as Taiwan's first 8-bit home computer.
1983 - Acer is the first company to promote PC/XT products in Taiwan.
1985 - AcerLand, Taiwan's first and largest franchised computer retail chain, is founded.
1986 - Acer beats IBM with 32-bit PCs.

Phase 2 - 1987 - 1995: Establish a leading brand and go global
In 1987, Multitech formally became known as Acer, marking the start of Acer's efforts toward creating a strong brand name. During this second ten-year stage of development, Acer grew extensively and expanded both strategically as well as geographically. The company grew to be ranked 8th largest PC brand in the world.
1987 - The Acer name is created.
1988 - Acer Inc. launches IPO.
1989 - TI-Acer DRAM joint venture with Texas Instruments is formed.
1991 - Acer introduces ChipUp technology - the world's first 386-to-486 single-chip CPU upgrade solution.
1992 - Acer creates the world's first 386SX-33 chipset.
Acer initiates its first corporate re-engineering.
Phase 3 - 1996 - 2000: Offer fresh technology for everyone, everywhere
During the company's 20th anniversary celebration, the third stage of development was launched, including basic goals for technological innovation and simplification of operations. Top priority was placed on delivering the freshest, most affordable technology for the benefit of consumers worldwide.
1996 - Sertek is listed on the Taiwan stock exchange.
1997 - Official groundbreaking ceremony is held for Aspire Park, Acer's multifunction high-tech intelligence park.
1998 - Acer is the official IT Sponsor of the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok, introducing the world's first PC-based management system for a major international sporting event.
1999 - Aspire Academy is set up in Aspire Park to help managers of Asian firms and MNCs with offices in Asia improve their organizational and leadership effectiveness.
2000 - Re-engineering for the future, Acer splits off its OEM business unit to create Wistron Corp., an independent design and IT manufacturing company.
Phase 4 - 2001 - beyond: Transform from manufacturing to services
In the 26 years since its inception, Acer has evolved from a manufacturing powerhouse to a globally recognized computer brand, marketing world-class IT products and services.
2001 - Acer adopts a new corporate identity to symbolize Acer's commitment to enhancing people's lives through technology.
2002 - The new Acer Aspire is launched, bringing fresh home-PC standards to the global PC arena.
The Acer Value Labs are inaugurated to enhance Acer's customer-centric focus, and integrate technologies that add value to customers' lives.
Launch of the TravelMate C100 Convertible Tablet PC, the first convertible Tablet PC available in the worldwide market.
2003 - The next-generation Empowering Technology platform is launched, integrating hardware, software and service to provide easy-to-use, dependable end-to-end technologies.
Acer launches the Ferrari 3000, the first notebook in the world to sport the patented Ferrari-red color.
2004 - Acer unveils the new Folio design for notebooks, featuring pure functional simplicity, smooth curves and subtle elegance.
Founder Stan Shih retires from the Acer Group.
Acer becomes the world's No. 5 brand for PCs and notebooks, demonstrating the highest year-on-year growth among the top five vendors.
2005 - J.T. Wang assumes the position of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Gianfranco Lanci steps into the role of President of Acer Inc.
Acer is voted Reader's Digest gold-medal Computer SuperBrand in Asia for the seventh consecutive year.


ACER INDIA
Acer ranks among the world's top five branded PC vendors, designing and marketing easy, dependable IT solutions that empower people to reach their goals and enhance their lives. In 2000, Acer spun-off its manufacturing operation to focus on globally marketing its brand-name products: desktop and mobile PCs, servers and storage, displays, peripherals, and e-business solutions for business, government, education, and home users. Established in 1976, Acer Inc. employs 5,600 people supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries. Revenues in 2004 reached US$7 billion.


Strategic Partners




WIPRO
About Wipro
Wipro Infotech is the IT Services, Solutions & Products division of the Rs. 81.7 billion Wipro Limited. For the quarter ended December 31, 2005, Wipro Infotech recorded Revenues of Rs.3992 Million, a growth of 17% year on year and Profit before Interest and Tax of Rs.376 Million a growth of 39% year on year.
With over two decades of experience, Wipro has stamped its presence on the Indian market and leads the Indian IT industry. Headquartered at Bangalore, our business spans India, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
By collaborating with Wipro, organizations garner the power of tried and tested frameworks, strong domain knowledge, a large pool of certified technology specialists and best of breed alliances. We bring to market tailor-made, industry specific solutions that help meet your business challenges while increasing operational efficiency.
Azim Premji, Chairman and Managing Director of Wipro is said to have been responsible for expanding and diversifying this company from an FMCG company which made Vanaspati Oil, soaps and other consumer products into a IT services company as it is today.
History
Wipro was set up in the backdrop of the small town of Amalner in Maharashtra in 1945. Primarily an oil factory, the chief products were Sunflower Vanaspati and 787 laundry soap (a by-product of the Vanaspati operations). The company was called Western India Vegetable Products Limited, with a modest presence in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
In the 1970s Wipro embarked on an ambitious phase of expansion and diversification.
It was in the early eighties that Wipro made its foray into the Infotech arena. An energetic, committed team of professional R & D and marketing managers came together in Bangalore in 1980. Due credit should be given that most of these R & D computer professionals and marketing managers were dragged enmass from Electronics Corporation of India Limited Hyderabad, who were pioneer in research and development of indigenous first computer hardware, system software, telecom applications etc. Indeed Wipro, HCL, Indchem, Hinditron all should be indebted to ECIL for providing such a high calibre R and D managers, when experienced infotech manpower was not available in our country. With this began the Wipro Infotech story. In a small lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the team developed the first Indian 8086 chip.
Wipro has transcended from being a service provider to being a consultant, guide and trusted partner.Today Wipro is world largest independent R&D Service Provider
Timeline

Wipro Limited was incorporated in 1945 and commenced its operations in 1946. Significant milestones are:
• 1945: Incorporation of Western India Vegetable Products Limited.
• 1947: An oil mill and hydrogenated cooking medium plant set up.
• 1966: Azim Premji takes over the leadership of Wipro at the age of 21.
• 1975: Wipro Fluid Power set up to manufacture hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders.
• 1977: Name of the company changed to Wipro Products Limited.
• 1980: Information technology services for domestic market started.
• 1981: Hardware company is launched.
• 1982: Name of the company changed to Wipro Limited.
• 1984: Software products subsidiary - Wipro Systems Ltd. - established.
• 1985: Toilet soaps manufacture begins.
• 1988: Wipro BioMed, a new business unit to market and service bio-analytical and diagnostic instruments, is launched.
• 1989: Joint venture with GE of US for medical systems, Wipro GE Medical Systems Ltd.
• 1990: Product software business discontinued; software services begin.
• 1992: Lighting business and finance arm is established.
• 1994: Merger of subsidiaries Wipro Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Systems Ltd. with Wipro Ltd.











• 1998: Relaunch of Wipro identity with Rainbow Flower and positioning statement, "Applying Thought".
• 1999: Software business reaches SEI certification.
• 1999: Wipro Net set up by restructuring Wipro Ltd.'s communication services business to address the Internet market.
• 2000: Listing of Wipro Ltd.'s ADRs on New York Stock Exchange.
• 2000: Six Sigma initiative begun.
• 2001: Wipro becomes world's first PCMM Level 5 company.
• 2002: Wipro becomes CMMi.
PRODUCTS
Specifications WLG 9100
Wipro recommends Windows® XP Professional for Business
Processor & Platform Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology
• Intel® Pentium M 533 MHz CPU upto 2.13Ghz
• Dothan Processor 1.5~2.0GHz , 400 FSB
• Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 LAN 3B Adapter IEEE 802.11b or
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG Adapter IEEE 802.11b+g
• Intel® 915GM Chipset
Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Professional or
Genuine Windows® XP Home

Chipset Intel® 915GM + ICH6-M
Main Memory • 64-bit Memory Bus, Supports DDR 333
• Two So-DIMM slots support up to 2048 MB
• 512KB FLASH BIOS; shadow RAM support
LCD Display 15-inch XGA (1024x768) TFT Display
Graphics • Intel® GMA 900,320Mhz ,3D/2D video
• Support Dual view, Clone
• Simultaneous LCD and CRT display at non-interface external CRT.
• Support TV-out
CRT Display Modes • VGA 640x480, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• SVGA 800x600, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• XGA 1024x768, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• SXGA 1280x1024, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• UXGA 1600x1200 256/32K/64K/16.7M colors
Hard Disk Drive • One 2.5” 9.5mm IDE HDD 4200rpm with ATA100 support
• Supported capacities of 30/40/60/80 GB
Floppy Disk Drive External USB FDD of 3.5", 1.44MB (optional)
Optical Disk Drive • Slim Combo Drive:24X CD-Write / 24X CD-Rewrite / 24X CD-ROM / 8X DVD-ROM
Modem Integrated 56K S/W MDC/Fax Modem V.92 / K56_flex Support Azalia MDC
LAN & WLAN • On board 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet controller
• Boot from LAN support
• Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 LAN 3B Adapter 802.11b or Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG, IEEE 802.11b+g
• Embedded dual band antenna for WLAN
Interface I/O Port • One RJ-11 jack for 56kbps Fax/ Modem
• One RJ-45 jack for Ethernet
• One DC-in jack for AC adapter
• One VGA port for external CRT
• One Mic in
• One Line in
• One Speaker / Headphone-out jack (SPDIF)
• One IEEE 1394
• Four USB 2.0 port
• One Parallel port
• One IR (SIR-115.2Kbps supported)
• One TV-out port
Audio • Intel® High Definition Audio Chip with 3D Effect and Full Duplex
• SoundBlaster Pro Compatible
• Build-in stereo speakers (1W)
• Built-in Microphone
Memory Card Reader • 4 in 1 Smart Media Reader
• Supports MMC, SD, Memory Stick , MS PRO flash cards
PC Card Slot • PCMCIA 2.1 compliant, One type II
• 32-bit PC Card Bus 1.0 architecture
Audio DJ Audio-DJ for play/pause, stop, forward, rewind
System Status LED • Power-on/Suspend
• Bat. Charging/full/low
• Storage device access
• Cap. Lock
• Scroll Lock
• Num Lock
• E-mail in box
• Wireless indicator
Keyboard • 19 mm full size 88key with 4 Instant launch Keys
• 2.5mm travel
Hot Keys on Keyboard • Instant launch Keys
• 4 buttons
• Power4 Gear , Email, Internet,
• Touchpad Lock
• Function Keys
• Fn+F1 suspend switch
• Fn+F2 Wireless switch
• Fn+F5 Brightness down
• Fn+F6 Brightness up
• Fn+F7 LCD on/off
• Fn+F8 LCD/CRT/TV-out switch display
• Fn+F10 Volume on/mute
• Fn+F11 Volume down
• Fn+F12 Volume up
On-screen-Display • Brightness
• Display selection LCD/Ext. Monitor/TV-out
• LCD on/off
• AC adapter plug in/ Battery in use
• Volume On/Off
• Volume Up/Down
• Power4 Gear indicator
• Fan fail warning with long ‘’beep’’ sound
Pointing Device • Built-in Synaptics touch pad
• 2 click buttons
• Internet scroll key with 4 ways
Power Management • Full feature ACPI power management, supports Stand-by, Suspend to Disk, and Suspend to RAM
• User Programmable Power management Key (Power4 Gear)
• MDP 2003 compatible
Battery Pack & Life • Li-Ion +14.8V,4400mAh battery pack
• Battery life up to 4 hrs (Mobile Mark 2002 in Windows XP) *
AC adapter • Output: 19V, 3.42A
• Input: 100—240V AC, 50/60Hz universal
Dimensions & Weight • 328 x 288 x 27-38mm (W x D x H, typical)
• 2.80Kg
Security • Pre-OS Authentication by programmable key code
• BIOS Booting User Password Protection
• HDD User Password Protection and Security Lock
• Kensington Lock hole provided
Certification • WLP / WHQL Certification
• Centrino Certification
• Energy star Certification
• DMI Certification
Accessories • Utility & Driver CD
• Power Cord & AC Adapter
• Stylish Leather bag with mini carry pouch
• Manual

Alliances
Partnering with the best... Wipro Infotech has forged strategic relationships with the some of the world's best technology companies to bring to you a comprehensive suite of IT products, solutions and services. When you come to Wipro you get to leverage these extended relationships and access some of the world's best technologies.
Wipro Infotech's list of alliance partners includes the who's who of the technology world. Read more about each of these alliances to find out how they can work for you.






























































MARKET ANALYSIS

Strategic Brand Management

Want a notebook?
The market for notebooks is growing in India.

 Notebooks that were till recently considered a “must-have” for the frequent flyer alone, have now become a strong force in the personal computing segment.

 Adoption of a mobile lifestyle is another added bonus for notebook consumers, what with wireless hot spots cropping up in coffee shops and malls and allowing users to plug into the Internet from anywhere.

 Not surprising then that notebooks are popping up everywhere — on TV news desks, in sitcoms, in movies and even in your friend’s lap.

 Taiwanese notebook makers estimate that the market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at 20 per cent each year. And they should know. After all they manufacture 70 per cent of notebooks or its components for major players like Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

 Now for the best part. Notebooks are predicted to get even more prominent in markets like India as hundreds of millions of old desktop PCs retire in the coming years. It’s hard to even imagine or calculate how many old, bulky machines will be replaced by sleek, sexy upstarts simply referred to as notebooks.

 The domestic notebook market took a positive leap in the first quarter of 2006 despite uncertainty surrounding changes in taxes and duties during the Budget. Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the notebook PC segment as a whole witnessed a massive growth of 177 per cent year-on-year in terms of unit shipments.

 According to International Data Corporation (India), the consumer market has started buying notebooks as second PCs.

 A press release issued by IDC categorically states, “The buyers are already familiar with desktops and are ready to migrate to the next level of technology. At the enterprise level, notebooks are increasingly being looked at as productivity tools, not meant for the designated few in the organisation’s hierarchy but for the larger workforce.”

 Most notebook vendors have consolidated their position with spruced up products and a mature marketing strategy to promote their brand.

 Leaders like Apple, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Samsung, Dell and LG have launched notebooks models with increased performance, more hard drive speed and capacity, processor speed and graphics capability.

 While it is popularly believed that Indians are price sensitive, this does not necessarily mean that we only buy products at a bargain. Notebooks, which are essentially costlier than laptops, are targeted at those who are top management officials or frequent fliers and a style statement in themselves.

 Pioneering the concept of high-end notebooks, Sony India launched its VAIO models that have been increasingly popular in India.

 Sony launched VAIO series at a price of over Rs 1 lakh and, as expected, caught the consumers’ fancy. The style elements that are integrated in the VAIO are combined with unique features. The company claims it brings out the world’s slimmest notebook PC.

 “Clear bright LCD, instant AV mode button and many more features will make VAIO a choice for new-age customers,” feels Kent Tanigaki, product head (IT), Sony India.

 The ThinkPad (erstwhile brand tag of IBM), also in the Sony VAIO category, has built up a huge fan following in India. In fact, notebooks gave Lenovo the much-needed platform to launch itself in the Indian market.

 Sanjeev Menon, general manager, Notebooks BU, Lenovo (India) details, “Customers are increasingly opting for advanced features in high-end products. Some aspects of these products have become very popular like biometric technology, lightweight, widescreen and security.”

 Lenovo outlines that its customers favour the lightweight, durable and scratch-resistant models that weigh less than three kilos and have a long battery life.

 Some give prime importance to connectivity and look for WLAN and limitless connectivity. Our suggestion: Pay attention to the hard drive, processor, RAM, connections, battery life, price and yes, do go in for a branded name.

 Not to be outdone, HP recently introduced five new series of notebook PCs, including the company’s thinnest and lightest notebook. Ravi Swaminathan, vice president (Personal Systems Group), HP (India) feels that technology is not simply about hardware.

 “It’s about enhancing the user experience by building innovations at every level of computing technology - right from designing to ease-of-use, security and reliability as well as maintenance and service,” he says. True.

 Vendors like Samsung and LG are closing in too. Samsung has strengthened its line-up by launching two new models in the Indian market.

 The notebooks feature Intel’s Napa platform with the latest built-in CPU Core processor Duo, i945 chipset, 802.11 ABG and Bluetooth 2.0. Competitively priced for the higher-end notebook market, Samsung promises to deliver dynamic performance and style.

 Apple MacBooks, considered to be the next generation machines are fast catching the fancy of Indian customers.

 There is no single brand in India that can bag the coveted title of the notebook leader. But clearly the Indian market is readying to grow leaps and bounds this year.
LG Launches PC, Notebook Range
LG Electronics introduced four models of wide-screen notebooks based on the Sonoma platform, tablet PCs and Mediacentre-based desktop PCs.
The company also cited IDC naming it as the leader in CRT and LCD monitors in Q2 2005 and H1 2005.

Among the products launched today is the LW 20, targeted at the performance and feature-conscious customers. According to the company, this is the first 12.1-inch notebook with two spindles, and has a hot-swappable optical drive bay. Other products included the Bluetooth-enabled LT 20 tablet PC, the Mediacentre-based XPC, 'super slim' LCD monitor and an external DVDRW enabled for Lightscribe technology.

The company is manufacturing cabinets for its PCs in India and will also begin manufacturing optical disk drives in the country. The XPC it launched today comes for Rs 24,990, Rs 36,990 and Rs 39,990. The notebooks cost upward of Rs 92,000 and are available in blue, ivory and silver colors.

R. Manikandan, GM-sales and marketing (IT), LGEIL, said, "These notebooks are true Sonoma with DDR2 and dual channel unlike notebooks from other vendors which come with DDR1."

"We are not content with the No. 3 position, which we gained in flat three quarters since we rolled out our PCs in 2004," he said. "The notebooks market will continue to grow at around 80 percent per year and we are looking to increase our market share of around 3 percent."

Manikandan said that it will continue to use its regional distribution model and will be adding new partners to commensurate unaddressed and untapped markets.
Zenith Outsells Wipro, Dell, Acer














In a recently released IDC-Dataquest Report on the Dataquest Top 20 IT companies in the country, Zenith emerged as the second largest PC manufacturer after HCL Infosystems.

Zenith Computers showed a higher market share than Wipro, Dell, and Acer. The market share of Zenith is shown to be at par with IBM/Lenovo, just after HP.

Zenith got a major boost in profitability after entering the Laptop market. In August 2004, Zenith launched 7 laptops with the 'Power of Seven'. These laptops were well accepted in the Indian mobility market and the sales of laptops according to the company increased 350% in 2 quarters.

The notebook market here has seen a growth exceeding 140% as compared to last year's 75% with sales touching 2.2 lakh units.

"FY 2004-05 can be called the year of innovation and new product launches for Zenith. Zenith's impressive performance was a result of introducing higher and better range products, and backing them with superior quality control and distribution", said the IDC-Dataquest Report on the company's performance.

HP's attempts to woo consumers back
Quick, think of HP and what comes to mind? Probably printers. But the Palo Alto, California, based company also sells a lot of personal computers. Now HP is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in getting this message out through its new worldwide marketing campaign, which will roll out on TV, in print, and a lot of it online. And HP wants to tell you how to make your personal computer just that – personal – whether by customizing its appearance or using your fingerprint to lock it up.
As HP likes to point out, it’s the top ranked seller of consumer notebooks worldwide, and second in global notebook PC sales, still, it’s not really seen as a PC company. To change this perception, the Silicon Valley company has come up with a new worldwide marketing campaign – it uses a folksy logo and the slogan 'The Computer is Personal Again', to highlight how users can connect with its products.
Enter the Toughbook
With the launch of its Toughbooks, Panasonic has entered a notebook space which is yet to be explored by other vendors. Atanu Kumar Das reports on the company’s strategy to market the range in India.
Panasonic became the latest entrant in the Indian notebook market when it launched its Toughbooks that are targeted at large enterprises as well as some niche verticals. It launched six models priced between Rs 1,70,000 and Rs 3,00,000. The company is in talks with two of the biggest telecom players in the country, and deals are expected in the next quarter. It is also in talks with NDTV and Zee; discussions with the latter are in the final stages. In the government sector, Panasonic is negotiating with the defence ministry and para-military forces (CISF, CRPF, BSF), but the deals are expected to close only in the JFM quarter.
The range
Model Price
CSW2 Rs 1.7 lakh
CSY2 Rs 2 lakh
CS18 Rs 2.3 lakh
CS29 Rs 2.75 lakh
CS73 Rs 3 lakh
CS51 NA

Even though the initial acquisition costs for ruggedised Toughbooks are high, the total cost of ownership is lower

So what makes the Toughbook rugged? It begins with the product philosophy. All Toughbooks are designed to handle extremes, unlike commercial laptops, which must be tweaked to add mettle. The rugged design begins with the proprietary magnesium alloy casing which is 20-times stronger than ABS plastic and five-times stronger than Titanium. The feature extends to the hard drive, which is shock-mounted in a metal casing with sponge and polymer compounds that insulate the disk from any shock even when the head is writing onto the drive. The LCD screen comes with internal dampeners. Even the connectors are flexible and can absorb shock. Another unusual feature is the fan-less design and lack of an air vent. All covers are sealed by specially developed synthetic resin to protect against water and dust. There is no fan since it would become a mechanical point of failure in case of drops or vibrations. Instead, Toughbooks are cooled through the body itself by creating a casing that breathes. .
Marketing strategy
In the first phase, Panasonic is targeting three cities, Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad. Third Wave is an Ahmedabad-based distributor and has been associated with Panasonic for the last nine years, distributing their scanners and faxes. The company will have 50 resellers in each city, and has planned for seven retail outlets in Delhi and five in Ahmedabad. “We are as yet undecided as to the number of retail outlets we will have in Mumbai because the business dynamics are quite different in that city. One thing is for sure—we will have more outlets in Mumbai than in Delhi,” Bhushan informs.
In the second phase, which kicks off in January, the company will target Bangalore and Hyderabad. “Since the products are priced at a premium we would be first targeting the metros, then as the response picks up we will go to more cities. The market for high-end laptops is growing at a steady pace. According to IDC, the government makes up 40 percent of the overall computing market. We also expect the government to play a major part in our overall sales,” Bhushan adds.
Shende also mentions that the Indian market is maturing, and that this is positive. The computing market is growing, and the most encouraging part is that the high-end market is gaining momentum in terms of value.
MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS

 Prices on a hike
Most MNC’s have hiked up PC prices after the recent hike in the price of microchips. A PC in India costs more than four times its counterpart in the West. Intel recently announced a possible drop in the price of microprocessors. This is expected to offset the hike in the price of microchips. MNC’s should have waited for Intel’s announcement before hiking PC prices. A hike, at a time when the PC market is going through a lean phase, is bound to discourage a lot of potential buyers. We can’t afford that since the PC penetration ratio is already minuscule.

 Services to products
As always, going through Express Computer has been a pleasure. The views expressed in your column ‘Services to Products’ by Naveen Kudroli of Delhi, which has also been shared by the president of Nasscom, Kiran Karnik, indicated that there is a huge untapped domestic market in India, particularly within the Government sector. However, according to Karnik, companies need to move up the value chain and should also offer quality products to customers.
Micro Technologies focuses on bringing out quality products for various day to day applications. Principally, these cover office desk systems, personnel management system, billing system, civic amenities management system, asset management information system and so on. Perhaps, Micro Technologies is among the few companies, which can today boast of an array of products numbering 50. Our latest product, the Micro IAS System (Micro Internet Access Security System), offers total security for Web-based transactions.

 Networked India
Companies like Reliance have been laying optic fibre cables across the length and breadth of the country. But the whole purpose of the exercise is lost if this is not made available to the common man at affordable rates. Availability of huge amounts of bandwidth doesn’t necessarily translate into utilisation of the same. The recent furore over the hike in satellite channel prices is a case in point. The home consumer is very price conscious and so will not be willing to pay the heavy price, even if it means faster Net accessibility.

 Going going gone!
This is with reference to the article ‘Reverse auctions help cut procurement costs’ (EC January 21, 2002). The article provided a detailed analysis of the whole process. Lack of proper knowledge about the system has been the main reason why many companies have been reluctant to adopt these new technologies. It would be helpful if you could also provide the contact details of the companies which provide such facilities.

ConnectCapital’s India fund corpus at $60-75 million
ConnectCapital is likely to announce closure of its India-specific fund soon. Market sources peg the corpus at anywhere between $60 to 75 million, with Singapore Technologies reportedly committing about $35 million to the fund. The firm is reportedly in the final stages of closing the fund and the Singapore Technologies investment. Names of the other investors could not be ascertained though Insight Capital is understood to have committed some money to the fund.


Notebooks fail to do the lap of honour
The laptop market is one which the MNCs have in their pockets with companies like Compaq, which has a 31.4 percent market share, followed by IBM with 27 percent market share leading the way. The Japanese IT giant Toshiba is the third largest laptop seller in India with 20.2 percent market share, followed by Dell with 11.8 percent share of the market. However, the fifth largest laptop seller has a mere 3.8 percent market share. The growth of laptop sales in India continues to be sluggish. For the third quarter of ‘01, the latest quarter for which IDC has released its report, around 9,956 laptops were sold.

Wipro, Infosys take diverse routes to the top
Wipro and Infosys may be vying for the top spot in the capital markets, but their business model and nature of revenue streams diverge more and more every quarter. Wipro Technologies, the software services arm of Wipro, derived 51 percent of its Global IT service revenues from outsourced R&D services for the last quarter ended December ‘01. For Infosys, the biggest revenue stream remains the banking, financial services and insurance segment (BFSI), which contributes 34.2 percent, compared to 36.6 percent in the same quarter last fiscal. wipro’s telecom and inter-networking practice contributed 19 percent, while the telecom and ISP practice contributed 17 percent. The embedded systems and Internet access device practice contributed 15 percent. Compared to this , Infosys’ Insurance sector contributed 15.7 percent of the total revenues while the banking and financial services contributed 18.5 percent of the total revenues. Wipro derives bulk of its revenues from retail and utilities compared to BFSI for Infosys.

Acer India introduces sub Rs 60,000 entry level notebooks
Leveraging its world leadership in Notebook Technology, Acer has launched a 'first time in India' sub Rs 60,000 MNC notebook at Rs 59,990. Acer's new TravelMate 212 TX mobile PC provides you with all you need to stay productive at home and at the office. The TravelMate 212 TX is an all-in-one 3 spindle mobile PC with FDD, HDD and CD ROM offering great performance and a full compliment of features at a competitive price.

MARKET GROWTH RATE

Next-generation mobility: Laptop market on the growth path

"The laptop market is expected to show an exponential growth in the years to come as it is growing 100 percent every quarter"

-Devita Saraf
Executive Director
Zenith Computers

There has never been such a good time for laptop buyers in India. In recent times, prices have dropped much faster than anticipated. Can you imagine a laptop at Rs 25,000? Yes, many players have launched low-priced laptops and prices are likely to drop further. India is fast becoming a large laptop market in the Asia-Pacific region with sales numbers expected to cross approximately 3,00,000 units in 2005-06, according to Frost & Sullivan.

"Buyers have started considering notebooks as an alternative to a desktop PC mainly due to the bridging of the price gap between entry-level laptops and desktops"

-S Rajendran
GM, Sales & Marketing
Mobile & Display Products Group
Acer India

Devita Saraf, Executive Director, Zenith Computers, says that in 2005 the notebook segment grossed sales of 80,000 units, recording 123 percent year-on-year growth and 137 percent sequential growth. Factors contributing to this explosive growth are new technology features, enhanced performance, product durability and post-sales services.

Zenith registered a volume growth of 350 percent in 2004-05 in the laptop segment. “The laptop market is expected to show an exponential growth in the years to come. Laptops are growing by 100 percent every quarter,” says Saraf.

S Rajendran, GM, Sales & Marketing, Mobile and Display Products Group, Acer India, believes that buyers have started considering notebooks as a convenient alternative to a desktop PC mainly due to the bridging of the price difference between an entry-level laptop and a desktop. As per IDC, the Indian notebook market for the calendar year 2004 was 1,90,850 units. In the first three quarters of 2005, the same has grown to 3,21,476 units. Acer’s sales have grown from 15,068 units in the calendar year 2004 to 48,405 units in the first three quarters of 2005.

The fact that India has a huge potential for laptops can be gauged from the entry of NEC in the Indian market. During his visit to India in October 2005, Wu Tengguo, MD, South and Southeast Asia Sales, NEC Computers Asia Pacific remarked, “We want to be among the top five PC companies in India. By 2008-09 we intend to have 3 percent of the desktop and 6 percent of the Indian notebook market.”


Where is the mobility market headed?

• Performance improvement: Dual-core DTs and notebooks are expected to be more prevalent; there will be more momentum for PC growth, and even more for notebooks.
• Portability: As notebooks start delivering desktop advantages, executives will move towards the lighter alternative. The notebook’s mobility feature also allows workers to improve productivity and further lower the company’s TCO within an acceptable range.
• Wireless technology: The Indian laptop market looks poised to grow exponentially due to the increasing demand from mobile computing in a fast growing economy. Next generation Wi-Fi will provide faster speed, and wider bandwidth and range to boost wireless access.
• NAPA: With the introduction of NAPA in notebooks, corporate customers can take advantage of the enhanced performance of dual-core technology when running multi-threaded applications. Consumers can play 3D games while concurrently performing tasks such as streaming media or security scans.

Trends

"With Wi-Fi on handsets, there is bound to be demand for smart handheld devices that are used in department stores, hospitals, shopping complexes and other business sectors"

-Ish Bawa
Marcom Manager
BenQ

Laptops are also gaining acceptance as their portability, and more importantly performance levels, are matching those of a desktop PC. Many customers are switching from desktops to notebooks due to attractive price points. The user is demanding better performance, low price and lightweight machines. The key verticals driving the adoption are education, BFSI and SMBs.

“We expect the broadband, wireless and gaming segments to drive the demand for mobility products. We also see many customers switching from desktops to notebooks due to a better price proposition and the inherent advantages of mobility products. Organisations will be looking at notebooks as a replacement when their existing PC platform environment reaches the end of its lifecycle. We also see quite a few educational institutions and corporates adopting laptops with wireless in a big way,” says Garde.

Kalpak Bhatt, Product Manager, Gigabyte Technology India, believes that the trend is towards multimedia and mobility. “Multimedia is an inherent part of laptops. For example, a DVD-CDRW Combo drive is the most common feature of a laptop now. As far as market reach is concerned, it is essential to be present all across the country as well as be available globally. We have succeeded in selling our laptops through the Web. Retailing & e-tailing is tomorrow’s future.”

Ish Bawa, Marcom Manager, BenQ says, “Education and BFSI will drive the notebook market’s growth. SMBs and possibly the SOHO segment will also contribute.” In terms of technology, notebooks will not be a laggard to desktops, and the majority of office tasks can be completed, though some high-end design or data intensive work may still be done on the desktop platform.

"Vendors are expanding the market by offering consumers more choice in products, and encouraging potential desktop and TV consumers to go in for notebooks"

-Rajendra Kumar
Executive Vice-president
HCL Infosystems


Budget notebooks in demand

The earlier hindrance to the growth of the laptop market was price. However, with prices coming down that seems to be a non-issue. Besides, Bhatt feels that laptops are also feature rich. For instance, Gigabyte offers a fully-loaded laptop at the entry level. It not only comes with basics like 256 MB DDR RAM, 40 GB HDD, combo drive, 15” TFT LCD, LAN connectivity, modem, USB and PCMCIA, but also WLAN card, IEEE port, card reader slot, TV out and a parallel port on Intel Cel-M CPU & 915 GM chipset. The company is soon coming out with a cost-effective laptop in 14.1” widescreen varieties called the Chocolate Cookie laptop.

NEC has also launched their p8100 and e3100 models in this market segment. The entry-level segment is expected to account for 70 percent of the laptops being procured this year. Nevertheless, this does not discount growth in the middle and higher-end notebook categories. In fact, the Rs 70,000 to Rs 100,000 band still continues to be among the most popular segments.

Buyers have started considering notebooks as a convenient alternative to a desktop PC. Says Rajendran, “Though our entry-level notebooks have been widely accepted in the market and have increased a hundred-fold in the last year, it is still the Rs 70,000-Rs 80,000 category that accounted for a big share of the market in 2004-2005.”

Demand from educational institutions, specifically management institutes, colleges and the SMB segment is growing. Bigger corporates are equipping their mobile executives with entry-level laptops which have full features at an aggressive price.

SMBs: the emerging segment

Apart from large enterprises, SMBs are also contributing to a significant portion of shipments, according to IDC. The SMB community has started looking at notebooks as a mobile productivity tool.

Saraf says that the consumption in small enterprises grew by 118 percent, accounting for 17 percent of the total notebook sales in the business segment. On the other hand, medium-sized enterprises grew by 136 percent, accounting for 21 percent.
According to Bhatt, SMBs buy more of entry-level laptops today. The penetration of budget laptops in the SMB segment has started. In terms of percentage, SMBs today would have 60-70 percent of budget laptops. Currently though, desktop penetration is definitely stronger in the SMB segment and will probably remain so for at least 3-4 years as the number of SMBs is large and growing.

Handheld devices gaining popularity

Mobility does not just mean laptops. Today, executives prefer something small, light and easy to carry. Hence, the demand for PDAs, mobile phones and flash drives is increasing faster than ever before. Though still a small market, it is certainly growing.

Rajat Sharma, Industry Analyst, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan India says, “The handheld devices market has a low base. It is a logical extension to the notebooks market and will only start witnessing growth after the notebook market gains more traction. The handheld market is in a nascent stage and is growing at the rate of 25 percent a year. The verticals that contribute to this market traditionally have been telecom, IT, insurance, healthcare and manufacturing.”

Bhatt sees a huge potential in the smart phone market. “Smart phones will eat into laptops and no-frills mobiles to an extent. They will take away a chunk of the PDA market. The demand for such products is still in early stages but I won’t be surprised if it increases rapidly. These markets will peak sometime in Q3 or Q4 of 2006.”

Nokia, the largest mobile manufacturer, is tracking the developments in this sector. Its Enterprise Solutions arm is helping businesses and institutions worldwide improve their performance through extended mobility. Two years into its operation, this particular wing is worth a billion dollars.

With its product offerings—9300i, E60, E61, E70 and 6708—Nokia seeks to meet all the needs of the corporate segment. For instance, the Nokia 9300i smart phone is a compact business device with a full keyboard, 65,536-colour screen, and incorporates WLAN connectivity for faster wireless access to corporate information. The 9300i supports a broad range of enterprise e-mail solutions and has an attachment viewer that makes it the perfect combination of design and functions to meet the growing demands of mobile professionals.

G K Chakrapani, Country General Manager, Nokia Enterprise Solutions says, “Business mobility is catching on in India, and mobile professionals want efficiencies in time and cost. We are looking at how we can be of help to enterprises in achieving mobility and meeting their goals. How can enterprises look at extending certain tasks beyond the office domain? It is about using a device to access information that is in the corporate network, and do so in a fast, secure, convenient and simple manner.”

Gigabyte launched a smart phone that has features such as built-in TV (you can only watch free-to-air channels), card reader, Bluetooth and WLAN apart from the normal features like camera and USB connectivity. This phone runs on the Microsoft Mobile 5.0 version OS designed for smart PDAs.

On the applications front, BenQ has entire office suites now available on these devices; there are seamless messaging, calendar and browsing applications. The mobile phone and the PDA have converged into a single handheld computing-cum-communication device. Also, with e-mail-enabled handhelds, one can almost take the office anywhere.

Growth drivers

• The market for budget laptops will continue to grow at a fast pace as new first-time customers will buy laptops instead of desktops.
• Enterprises will also start equipping their sales force and other lower-management cadres with laptops.
• On the technology front, wireless WANs will slowly start becoming a standard feature of deployments.
• Blue-collar deployments of mobile data solutions is a new trend this year. IT has to move to the field, and rugged mobile computers will start to be deployed for blue collar applications.

Security concerns

While the demand for mobile solutions is growing, the need for security is also rising.

An increasing number of executives are storing company data on mobile devices such as smartphones, PDAs, laptops and USB drives, and with Bluetooth-enabled devices entering the mainstream, IT departments are confronted with security issues. Vendors too are doing their bit to ensure that such issues do not affect the overall market.
Most Acer notebooks are equipped with Acer Empowering Technology functions such as Acer eDataSecurity Management which makes use of passwords and advanced encryption (up to 256-bit) algorithms to protect files from being accessed by unauthorised users. It is integrated with Windows Explorer as a shell extension for quick and easy data encryption/decryption, and also supports on-the-fly file encryption for MSN Messenger and Microsoft Outlook.

As far as software security is concerned, Gigabyte says that they provide over 90 percent of their laptops with Linux OS, and these open source OSs are generally safer when compared to other laptops.
Dell takes third-party support to resolve security solutions from hardware encryption to tracking data. There are a couple of ways to track data such as installing GPS module in the products themselves; another way is to put codes in either hard drives or BIOS which will send out a signal while connected to the Internet or utilise 3G technology.

PRICING STRATEGY

The Falling Costs of Mobile Computing
Wireless connectivity has altered the business computing landscape forever. IT managers confronted with the demand for more mobile computing need to address issues as diverse as costs, security, resource allocation, and training. The technical staff will require new skills and knowledge to handle the unique requirements of mobile devices and their applications. Undoubtedly, changes in the network infrastructure will be necessary in order to respond to the capabilities of the next generation of mobile computers.
The most popular model for mobile computing today involves the integration of laptop (or, more accurately, notebook) computers with handheld devices. The laptop, however, is the primary component that IT organizations must deal with. Handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones are secondary devices to the laptop, and although they are highly popular devices, they will not play the central role in the mobile computing model over the next five years.
Market Changes Will Lower Prices





Computer Economics forecasts an increase in the ratio of laptops to desktops over the next two years, as shown in Figure 1. Laptops will outnumber desktops in most organizations by 2007, reaching 60% of the total personal computers in use in business computing. These conclusions are supported by most computer vendors who are gearing up to manufacture significantly more laptop systems. For example, the Lenovo Group, which bought out IBM's PC division, expects that laptop shipments will exceed desktops by 2008.
Recognition of the marketing opportunity represented by mobile computing has all of the major personal computer vendors preparing new strategies to gain a competitive advantage. Perhaps the most interesting battle will be between Lenovo and Dell.
BRAND STRATEGY & ROLE OF MEDIA

Want a notebook?

The market for notebooks is growing in India.

Notebooks that were till recently considered a “must-have” for the frequent flyer alone, have now become a strong force in the personal computing segment.

Adoption of a mobile lifestyle is another added bonus for notebook consumers, what with wireless hot spots cropping up in coffee shops and malls and allowing users to plug into the Internet from anywhere.

Not surprising then that notebooks are popping up everywhere — on TV news desks, in sitcoms, in movies and even in your friend’s lap.

Taiwanese notebook makers estimate that the market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at 20 per cent each year. And they should know. After all they manufacture 70 per cent of notebooks or its components for major players like Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Now for the best part. Notebooks are predicted to get even more prominent in markets like India as hundreds of millions of old desktop PCs retire in the coming years. It’s hard to even imagine or calculate how many old, bulky machines will be replaced by sleek, sexy upstarts simply referred to as notebooks.
The domestic notebook market took a positive leap in the first quarter of 2006 despite uncertainty surrounding changes in taxes and duties during the Budget. Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the notebook PC segment as a whole witnessed a massive growth of 177 per cent year-on-year in terms of unit shipments.

According to International Data Corporation (India), the consumer market has started buying notebooks as second PCs.

A press release issued by IDC categorically states, “The buyers are already familiar with desktops and are ready to migrate to the next level of technology. At the enterprise level, notebooks are increasingly being looked at as productivity tools, not meant for the designated few in the organisation’s hierarchy but for the larger workforce.”

Most notebook vendors have consolidated their position with spruced up products and a mature marketing strategy to promote their brand.

Leaders like Apple, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Samsung, Dell and LG have launched notebooks models with increased performance, more hard drive speed and capacity, processor speed and graphics capability.

While it is popularly believed that Indians are price sensitive, this does not necessarily mean that we only buy products at a bargain. Notebooks, which are essentially costlier than laptops, are targeted at those who are top management officials or frequent fliers and a style statement in themselves.

Pioneering the concept of high-end notebooks, Sony India launched its VAIO models that have been increasingly popular in India.

Sony launched VAIO series at a price of over Rs 1 lakh and, as expected, caught the consumers’ fancy. The style elements that are integrated in the VAIO are combined with unique features. The company claims it brings out the world’s slimmest notebook PC.

“Clear bright LCD, instant AV mode button and many more features will make VAIO a choice for new-age customers,” feels Kent Tanigaki, product head (IT), Sony India.

The ThinkPad (erstwhile brand tag of IBM), also in the Sony VAIO category, has built up a huge fan following in India. In fact, notebooks gave Lenovo the much-needed platform to launch itself in the Indian market.

Sa Lenovo outlines that its customers favour the lightweight, durable and scratch-resistant models that weigh less than three kilos and have a long battery life.

Some give prime importance to connectivity and look for WLAN and limitless connectivity. Our suggestion: Pay attention to the hard drive, processor, RAM, connections, battery life, price and yes, do go in for a branded name.

Not to be outdone, HP recently introduced five new series of notebook PCs, including the company’s thinnest and lightest notebook. Ravi Swaminathan, vice president (Personal Systems Group), HP (India) feels that technology is not simply about hardware.

“It’s about enhancing the user experience by building innovations at every level of computing technology — right from designing to ease-of-use, security and reliability as well as maintenance and service,” he says. True.

Vendors like Samsung and LG are closing in too. Samsung has strengthened its line-up by launching two new models in the Indian market.

The notebooks feature Intel’s Napa platform with the latest built-in CPU Core processor Duo, i945 chipset, 802.11 ABG and Bluetooth 2.0. Competitively priced for the higher-end notebook market, Samsung promises to deliver dynamic performance and style.

Apple MacBooks, considered to be the next generation machines are fast catching the fancy of Indian customers.

There is no single brand in India that can bag the coveted title of the notebook leader. But clearly the Indian market is readying to grow leaps and bounds this year.







India's latest craze: Laptops
Notebooks that were till recently considered a "must-have" for the frequent flyer alone, have now become a strong force in the personal computing segment.
Adoption of a mobile lifestyle is another added bonus for notebook consumers, what with wireless hot spots cropping up in coffee shops and malls and allowing users to plug into the Internet from anywhere.
Not surprising then that notebooks are popping up everywhere - on TV news desks, in sitcoms, in movies and even in your friend's lap.
Taiwanese notebook makers estimate that the market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at 20 per cent each year. And they should know. After all they manufacture 70 per cent of notebooks or its components for major players like Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
Now for the best part. Notebooks are predicted to get even more prominent in markets like India as hundreds of millions of old desktop PCs retire in the coming years. It's hard to even imagine or calculate how many old, bulky machines will be replaced by sleek, sexy upstarts simply referred to as notebooks.
The domestic notebook market took a positive leap in the first quarter of 2006 despite uncertainty surrounding changes in taxes and duties during the Budget. Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the notebook PC segment as a whole witnessed a massive growth of 177 per cent year-on-year in terms of unit shipments.
According to International Data Corporation (India), the consumer market has started buying notebooks as second PCs.
Sony launched VAIO series at a price of over Rs 100,000 and, as expected, caught the consumers' fancy. The style elements that are integrated in the VAIO are combined with unique features. The company claims it brings out the world's slimmest notebook PC.
"Clear bright LCD, instant AV mode button and many more features will make VAIO a choice for new-age customers," feels Kent Tanigaki, product head (IT), Sony India.
The ThinkPad (erstwhile brand tag of IBM), also in the Sony VAIO category, has built up a huge fan following in India. In fact, notebooks gave Lenovo the much-needed platform to launch itself in the Indian market.
."
Lenovo outlines that its customers favour the lightweight, durable and scratch-resistant models that weigh less than three kilos and have a long battery life.
Some give prime importance to connectivity and look for WLAN and limitless connectivity. Our suggestion: Pay attention to the hard drive, processor, RAM, connections, battery life, price and yes, do go in for a branded name.
Not to be outdone, HP recently introduced five new series of notebook PCs, including the company's thinnest and lightest notebook. Ravi Swaminathan, vice president (personal systems group), HP (India) feels that technology is not simply about hardware.
Apple MacBooks, considered to be the next generation machines are fast catching the fancy of Indian customers.
There is no single brand in India that can bag the coveted title of the notebook leader. But clearly the Indian market is readying to grow leaps and bounds this year.
Zenith and the art of contrarian pricing
Mumbai: The Rs300-crore Zenith Computers Ltd, the largest laptop manufacturer today has reasons to be pleased; its laptop strategy, called the 'Power of Seven', which was launched in 2004 has helped push up the sales of its laptops. Zenith's strategy was to move up the value chain focusing on the high-end laptops segment, unlike the volume strategy of those who were trying to develop the sub-10,000 PC.
The company opted to cater to consumers who preferred a fully functional PC or laptop depending on their application requirement compared to a low-value, low-cost PC. Market analysts like IDC India two were sceptical whether the consumers would really go to the market to buy low-priced PCs.
Zenith's strategy to move up to the higher end of the spectrum proved successful. Since laptops are a high margin product, increase in laptop sales have significantly added to the company's bottom line.
" Zenith now plans to increase its retail stores from 450 to 1000 in 240 cities across the country by end 2006.
HCL FORAYS INTO THE MOBILE COMPUTING MARKET

HCL the leader in Desktops PCs unveils India's first segment specific range of notebooks brand - 'HCL Leaptops'
HCL announces manufacturing of Laptops in India .
New Delhi, February 23, 2006 -- HCL Infosystems, India's premier information enabling company & market leader in desktop computers, today announced its foray into the mobile computing space with the launch of India's first segment specific range of notebooks brand - 'HCL Leaptops'- more than just laptops.
Exhilarated over the company's foray into the mobile computing market, Mr. George Paul, Executive Vice President, HCL Infosystems Ltd. said, "Today, HCL has emerged as a brand of choice, among enterprise & home users, in desktop computers. We have led the desktop PC segment ahead of multinational companies for the fifth year consecutively."
"The Notebook market in India is poised for growth and our strategy to foray into the mobile computing market is dictated by the voice of our customers demanding mobility, making it easier for them to work and live in new and flexible ways." added Mr. Paul.
"We aim to repeat the same success as in desktop PC and hope to receive even better response from customers to our segment specific range of HCL notebook offerings" said Mr. Paul "
HCL Notebooks come with award winning HCL's Best Assured Services that give customers several convenient options of service anywhere in India. These options include real time tele-support for prompt resolution of soft issues, qualified technical online support through instant messaging and email, built-in online access to 'easy to use', self - help guides / user manuals & with 'return to bench' offering to 'HCL Service Points' manned by skilled, well-trained support engineers for home & SOHO users.
For Enterprise users, onsite support is available at 300 locations across the country with the facility of stand by unit support at metros for the traveling professional.
HCL Leaptops come with a comprehensive insurance coverage from theft, accidental damage, breakage and liquid spill, ensuring complete peace of mind to its users.
HCL, a clear leader in the enterprise, government and consumer space is all poised to meet the growing mobile computing needs of its customers. Leveraging its inherent strengths of pan-India sales & service infrastructure, HCL's launch of solution centric offerings addresses the application requirement of different segments of customers.

Starting from Rs. 27,490/-, HCL is offering a very wide range of Leaptops including multimedia, ruggedised, ultra thin and light notebooks with Intel & AMD platforms. HCL has pioneered the concept of financing consumer PCs through various tie-ups and has now made its notebooks available on easy to avail finance options with EMI starting at Rs 699/- per month.
The new range of HCL Notebooks are designed as per the requirements of various target groups such as Architects, Engineers, Doctors, Info-kiosks (for Jewelers, Opticians, Banks), Women, Defence etc.
The notebook market has already witnessed exponential growth for the last two years and is estimated to grow at more than 50% year on year.
SEGMENTATION & POSITIONING STRATEGY

Segmentation Versus Personas: Where Should B2B Marketers Start?

Most B2B firms segment prospects and customers by basic criteria like company basic criteria like company size, industry, and geography. Unfortunately, with this approach, it is difficult to precisely align marketing messages with buyer pain points or purchase cycle stages. B2B marketers improve their customer knowledge when they base segmentation on prospect roles, needs, or preferences, rather than sales-centric categories. By applying customer-centric segmentation criteria and using the principles of Scenario Design, B2B marketers can develop communication strategies that resonate with the specific business challenges and life- cycle issues that customers face.

The Next-Generation Wireless LAN

Wireless LAN technology is gaining broad acceptance and being adopted worldwide in organizations that clamor for the competitive advantage of an increasingly mobile and highly productive workforce.

The Arrival of Wireless

Wireless technology for computer users is nothing new. The first connections were established two decades ago. Adoption, though, has proceeded very slowly, mostly limited to a few specialized vertical markets, such as warehousing, education, and retail.
Implementation has been slow for three reasons. First, the original wireless data rates were too slow to serve mainstream users on a shared LAN. Although throughput did gradually increase, network speeds still drastically lagged those of wired LANs. Second, proprietary, nonstandard solutions dominated the marketplace, providing little interoperability among devices, or the peace of mind for users that comes from having multiple vendor options. Third, these low-speed proprietary solutions were very expensive compared to wired solutions.


Perhaps most importantly, many types of organizations today see tremendous value by adding wireless onto the corporate LAN. For years, laptop and notebook computers have promised anytime, anywhere computing. But, with access to the LAN and the Internet becoming such an integral part of business, a wireless connection is needed to make true the promise of anytime, anywhere computing. Wireless devices enable users to be constantly connected from virtually anywhere: a desk, a conference room, the coffee shop, or another building on a corporate or academic campus. This ability provides users with maximum flexibility, productivity, and efficiency, while dramatically boosting collaboration and cooperation with colleagues, business partners, and customers. In addition, wireless can bring LAN access to locations where laying cable is difficult or expensive.

WOW ; Web Technologies, News and Trends
Intel plans to unveil next week a prototype consumer portable computer that blurs the line between desktops and notebooks by shedding the traditional clamshell laptop design.



The prototype, which acts like an all-in-one desktop, will be one of three models unveiled at Intel's annual spring developer conference in San Francisco. Two concept business notebooks will also be unveiled. Collectively, the machines are known as Florence.
The machine has space for a telephone handset for placing voice over Internet Protocol phone calls and a remote for controlling multimedia functions. Built-in 802.11 wireless networking will connect users to a home network. It also has a fingerprint sensor and a smart card reader for extra security and authentication of premium content, Trainor said.

Not in showrooms yet While Intel will show off the Florence prototypes next week, it doesn't expect them to become available to consumers anytime soon, Trainor said.

"These are, in theory, our 2005 concept vehicles," he said. "The only reason to throw that word 'theory' in there is because I think this particular home design is going to be so interesting that people will take it and do it in 2004."

If manufacturers do run with it, they would use Sonoma, a future version of Intel's Centrino, a bundle of chips for wireless notebooks, which includes its Pentium M processor, a set of chips and a wireless module.

"You probably could not build a machine with this size and weight with anything but Centrino mobile technology. At 8 pounds, it's probably lighter than some of the home gaming clamshells," Trainor said.

But even though Florence Digital Home is likely to gain attention, selling all-in-one desktops has traditionally been more difficult than standard desktops or clamshell notebooks.

IBM, for one, got out of the business in 2002. Last year, however, the company showed off two convertible ThinkPad designs that morphed into more desktoplike models.

Apple Computer, Gateway and start-up Pelham Sloane have released new all-in-one desktops in the last few months, showing that the market does have some legs.

Intel believes that its concept could catch on, even if a desktop with a notebook processor is somewhat unusual.

"As more and more people desire the benefits of mobility and freedom, we're seeing market segmentation or finer tuning of designs for different lifestyles. We think that's wonderful," Trainor said.

Intel's two business notebook prototypes, On-the-Go, a lightweight notebook based on a 12-inch screen, and Virtual Office, a communications-centric notebook with a 15.4-inch-wide screen, are aimed at people who travel often or need to work remotely.
.

The CivilNote 200 features a Pentium 100 processor with 40 MB RAM, 1 GB hard disk, 10.4-inch flat screen colour display, 2 PCMCIA slots, 1.5 hour battery backup and comes with a one-year warranty and is priced at Rs 19,999 (end-user price). The notebook is manufactured by Pushpam Infotech, Pune with parts supplied from Taiwan.
Jain says that the notebook will be able to use Windows 95 or 98, Office 97 and Tally accounting software on the machine if required.
Increasing PC Penetration in India
ICT3 Quarterly (Skoch Consulting) has an interesting roundtable on affordable computing in India. What is very interesting is the wheel of penetration for increasin IT usage in India.


Have been tracking Emergic's views on low-cost PC and their penetration in India.
What we need urgently is that a technological orientation among our politicians and bureaucrats. They should know the must role of technology in today's world. Last but least, the awakening of masses in this endeavour is a must.
The discussion on low cost computing strategy (on the Skoch site) and the accompanying graphic make interesting reading.
World’s lightest and thinnest pocket PC now in India

HCL Frontline, the distribution arm of HCL Infosystems, India’s premier information enabling company, has announced the launch of a slew of Toshiba products, aimed specifically at the Indian market. In line with the global trend of notebook PCs outselling Desktops, HCL Frontline is targeting an increase of 70-80 per cent in mobile products in India by introducing a number of state-of-the-art mobile and technology products from Toshiba. HCL Frontline is the exclusive distributor for Toshiba notebooks in India.

Foremost among the technology products launched, the Pocket PC e310 is the attention grabber..

The other winner launched by HCL Frontline in the notebook segment is the Pentium 4 based Satellite 2400, which comes integrated with Bridge Media Technology. HCL is also introducing a fully loaded notebook at an attractive price of Rs 75,990 – the first of its kind in India. This value performance model is designed with a 1.2Hz processor 128 MB RAM, 20 GB Hard Disk, 24X CD, Win XP Home and comes with a one-year international warranty.

HCL Frontline, which recently got India's largest single order for 611 Toshiba notebooks from PricewaterhouseCoopers, is clearly looking to snag the market. "Toshiba has retained the No.1 market share in the world again, and has moved up to the No. 2 position in the Indian market place with an impressive 22% market share," said Mr Rajendra Kumar, Vice President – Operations, HCL Frontline Division. Toshiba has displaced IBM from the number two slots in India.


HCL Frontline Division forged an exclusive alliance with Toshiba in 1997 to market and support the Japanese giant’s notebook computers in the country. Through HCL Frontline, Toshiba already markets five families of notebooks in India - Toshiba Satellite, Satellite Pro range, TE, Portege and Tecra.
INSTITUTIONAL MARKETING
Dell Enhances Indian Enterprise Mobility

Dell has recently launched a new range of notebooks and mobile workstations for the Indian enterprise market.

The company's new offerings include its next generation workstations- Dell Precision M90 and Dell Precision M65.

Rakesh Mandal, Senior Brand Manager, Dell Precision -South Asia and Australia and New Zealand said that the new products would give customers the freedom to replace their desktop workstations without compromising on the performance.

On the unique features of the products, he said that Dell Precision M90 has Intel Core Duo processors, up to 17 inch wide-aspect displays and up to 512MB high-performance NVIDIA Quadro FX OpenGL graphics. This enables parallel processing when running multi-threaded applications and efficient operation of multiple applications concurrently would be of special use for financial analysts.

Dell Precision M65 allows workstation users to power through complex applications, such as digital content creation and financial analysis. Moreover, its Wi-Fi options allow it to deliver exceptional engineering design, analysis and content creation anytime and anywhere.

Dell has also announced two other products, Dell Latitude D620 and Latitude 820, slimmer and lighter Notebook computers targeted at business customers. Additional features include hyper connectivity, Wi-Fi catcher, added layer of security of biometrics and extended battery life.

Commenting on the other two products, Mandal informed that in 2005, more business customers worldwide selected Dell Latitude notebook computers over any other business notebook. The business notebook market is experiencing rapid growth with an increase in unit sales of 25% globally. During this period Dell experienced almost 37% increase in this space and achieved market share of 19%.

The base configuration for D620 and D820 are priced at Rs45,590 and Rs56,177 respectively. On the other hand, the new mobile workstations Precision M90 M65 are priced at Rs 119200 and Rs 109000, respectively.
BUYER BEHAVIOUR
Buyer behaviour in a regional thoroughbred yearling market
This paper reports the results of a hedonic pricing analysis of a regional thoroughbred auction market, adding to a literature which has been built mainly on data from elite auction markets. The main contribution of the paper is the finding that the role of the dam in affecting yearling price, elusive in the existing literature, is shown to depend primarily on information about progeny performance rather than dam performance. Additional results confirm existing knowledge about the roles of the sire, yearling sex, and yearling age, and support suspicions that race horses are consumer rather than investment goods.
Buyer beliefs, attitudes and behaviour: foods with therapeutic claims
Builds on past studies in the USA and assesses the market potential for functional goods through investigating consumer needs and attitudes. Aims to add to past research through: assessing consumer knowledge and beliefs on nutrition and diet-health relationships; analysing the influence of such knowledge and beliefs of information and sources of information; and evaluating the effectiveness and implications of government preventative health campaigns on purchase behaviour. Concludes that issues regarding personal and national health are extremely important because of the financial costs and human suffering that could be involved; and that functional goods, as a relatively new phenomenon, still need to be examined further with regard to their influence on trust and legitimacy in buyer behaviour.
Discounting and Its Impact on Durables Buying Decisions
The phenomenon of discounting is well established in the economics literature. However, this research has traditionally assumed that households have a single discount rate and make all intertemporal tradeoffs based on that rate. More current research in decision making and marketing has challenged the economics approach to intertemporal choice behavior. In this article, we propose two aspects of discounting research that are particularly relevant to consumer behavior toward durable goods. We propose first that consumers have individual discount rates for product categories. The second proposition is that, in a multiattribute modeling context, consumers have different discount rates for different attributes. We also discuss the strategic implications of these discount phenomena for marketing managers.

‘Drop in price-points was a catalyst’

The domestic notebook market, which was at around 35,000 units a year in 2002, has grown by 10 times and is estimated to touch 3.6 lakh units in 2005. Taiwanese major Acer is at the forefront of this ‘laptop’ revolution with an aggressive pricing strategy. The company, which had launched a sub-Rs 30,000 laptop, has launched another variant of an entry level notebook priced at Rs 26,000 recently. S Rajendran, Acer’s general manager for Consumer Products Group, says his company has managed to expand its market share to 16% from 9% three years back. Here he talks about the growing popularity of laptops:

What is propelling laptop sales? Will they, like in the West, outsell desktops?
It is a combination of factors: better telecom infrastructure (enabling facile access to the Internet); increasing income levels; changing demographic profiles; and buyer behaviour. The reduction in price points for notebooks acted as the catalyst to enable explosive growth in this category. With the price delta between an entry-level notebook and a mainstream desktop narrowing, we certainly do see instances where the customer tends to pay a small premium for a notebook in return for improved mobile productivity. Still, given the low IT penetration in India, desktops (which is currently 92%- plus of the market) would continue to dominate for the next two years in the least.

Laptop prices have been south-bound over the last year? Do you anticipate this to continue? What is driving this trend?

Currently, we believe the price point for a good functional entry level notebook has about reached the sweetest price point in the industry. The industry expects that in the next few quarters, due to firming up of prices on some key components (like LCD displays) there could be a small uptick on the price points.

However, the customer would continue to derive best value for money for this category from the industry. The notebook market is in the midst of an unprecedented boom. Industry estimates indicate that the market for notebooks is galloping at over 100% plus growth annually. This is expected to continue into 2006 as well.

What should first time buyers of laptops consider before making an investment?

Application is key: thus the first time buyer needs to consider the usage needs as germane to him or her and then consider key features like adequacy of memory, storage capacity, need for connectivity, weight of the unit, and processing power. Thereafter he should consider an acceptable price band that meets his budget. Important factors in the consideration set should be the reputation of the brand, the spread of after-sales support network (Notebooks unlike desktops are more sophisticated in design and build and need specialised technical knowledge for support) and the extent to which the unit would be future proof (a two-year life span for notebooks should be reasonable).
POST SALE SERVICE FACTORS

The quality of customer service departments varies greatly. At one extreme are departments that simply transfer customer calls to the appropriate person or department for action, with little follow-up. At the other extreme are departments eager to receive customer requests, suggestions, and even complaints and handle them expeditiously.

In providing service, most companies progress through a series o stages. Manufacturers usually start out by running their own parts-and-service department. They want to stay close to the equipment and know its problems. They also find it expensive and time-consuming to train others, and discover that they can make good money running the parts-and-service business. As long as they are the only supplier of the needed parts, they can charge a premium price. In fact, many equipment manufacturers price their equipment low and compensate by charging high prices for parts and service. (This explains why competitors manufacture the same or similar parts and sell them to customers or intermediaries for less.)


Bibliography


Books and Magazines

Marketing Management by Kotler Philip - 11th Edition, page no- 465
PC Quest, march 2005
Data Quest, November 2005


Internet

www.hp.com
www.acer.com
www.ibm.com
www.wipro.in
www.dell.com
www.channeltimes.com
www.techfree.com
www.news.moneycontrol.com
www.expresscomputeronline.com
www.forum.techspot.in
www.forrester.com
www.forum.techarena.in
www.skoch.org
www.domain-b.com
www.business-standard.com
www.hclinfosystem.com
www.us.rediff.com
www.etstrategicmarketing.com
www.gombar.in
www.emergic.org
www.bizwarmatic.com
www.web.info.com











SUBMITTED TO SUBMITTED BY:





The History of Computers













"Who invented the computer?" is not a question with a simple answer. The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention.
This series covers many of the major milestones in computer history (but not all of them) with a concentration on the history of personal home computers.






Computer History
Year/Enter Computer History
Inventors/Inventions Computer History
Description of Event
1936
Konrad Zuse - Z1 Computer First freely programmable computer.
1942
John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry
ABC Computer Who was first in the computing biz is not always as easy as ABC.
1944
Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper
Harvard Mark I Computer The Harvard Mark 1 computer.
1946
John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
ENIAC 1 Computer 20,000 vacuum tubes later...
1948
Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn
Manchester Baby Computer & The Williams Tube Baby and the Williams Tube turn on the memories.
1947/48
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley
The Transistor No, a transistor is not a computer, but this invention greatly affected the history of computers.
1951
John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
UNIVAC Computer First commercial computer & able to pick presidential winners.
1953
International Business Machines
IBM 701 EDPM Computer IBM enters into 'The History of Computers'.
1954
John Backus & IBM
FORTRAN Computer Programming Language The first successful high level programming language.
1955
(In Use 1959)
Stanford Research Institute, Bank of America, and General Electric
ERMA and MICR The first bank industry computer - also MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) for reading checks.
1958
Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce
The Integrated Circuit Otherwise known as 'The Chip'
1962
Steve Russell & MIT
Spacewar Computer Game The first computer game invented.
1964
Douglas Engelbart
Computer Mouse & Windows Nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
1969
ARPAnet The original Internet.
1970
Intel 1103 Computer Memory The world's first available dynamic RAM chip.
1971
Faggin, Hoff & Mazor
Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor The first microprocessor.
1971
Alan Shugart &IBM
The "Floppy" Disk Nicknamed the "Floppy" for its flexibility.
1973
Robert Metcalfe & Xerox
The Ethernet Computer Networking Networking.
1974/75
Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers The first consumer computers.
1976/77
Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers More first consumer computers.
1978
Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston
VisiCalc Spreadsheet Software Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
1979
Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby
WordStar Software Word Processors.
1981
IBM
The IBM PC - Home Computer From an "Acorn" grows a personal computer revolution
1981
Microsoft
MS-DOS Computer Operating System From "Quick And Dirty" comes the operating system of the century.
1983
Apple Lisa Computer The first home computer with a GUI, graphical user interface.
1984
Apple Macintosh Computer The more affordable home computer with a GUI.
1985
Microsoft Windows Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.
SERIES TO BE CONTINUED



A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: PREHISTORY

The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth century B.C.



The Antikythera mechanism, used for registering and predicting the motion of the stars and planets, is dated to the first century B.C. It was discovered off the coast of Greece in 1901.
Arabic numerals are introduced to Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. Roman numerals remain in use in some parts of Europe until the seventeenth century. The Arabic system introduced the concepts of the zero and fixed places for tens, hundreds, thousand, etc., and greatly simplified mathematical calculations.
John Napier, Baron of Merchiston, Scotland, invents logs in 1614. Logs allow multiplication and division to be reduced to addition and subtraction.
Wilhelm Schickard builds the first mechanical calculator in 1623. It can work with six digits, and carries digits across columns. It works, but never makes it beyond the prototype stage. Schickard is a professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany.
Blaise Pascal builds a mechanical calculator in 1642. It has the capacity for eight digits, but has trouble carrying and its gears tend to jam.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents an automatic loom controlled by punch cards.
Charles Babbage conceives of a "Difference Engine" in 1820 or 1821. It is a massive steam-powered mechanical calculator designed to print astronomical tables. He attempts to build it over the course of the next 20 years, only to have the project cancelled by the British government in 1842. Babbage's next idea is the Analytical Engine - a mechanical computer that can solve any mathematical problem. It uses punch-cards similar to those used by the Jacquard loom and can perform simple conditional operations.
Augusta Ada Byron, the countess of Lovelace, met Babbage in 1833. She describes the Analytical Engine as weaving "algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." Her published analysis of the Analytical Engine is our best record of its programming potential. In it she outlines the fundamentals of computer programming, including data analysis, looping and memory addressing.
A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: ELECTRONICS

Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the first general purpose progammable calculator in 1941. He pioneers the use of binary math and boolean logic in electronic calculation.




Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking, is operational by December of 1943. ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer, is developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing tables for artillery. It is built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering and completed in November 1945.
Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the transistor in 1947.
UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer (pictured below), is developed in 1951. It can store 12,000 digits in random access mercury-delay lines. EDVAC, for Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, is completed under contract for the Ordinance Department in 1952.


HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: MINI

Texas Instruments and Fairchild semiconductor both announce the integrated circuit in 1959.





Ivan Sutherland demonstrates a program called Sketchpad on a TX-2 mainframe at MIT's Lincoln Labs in 1962. It allows him to make engineering drawings with a light pen.
A typical minicomputer costs about $20,000.
1965: An IC that cost $1000 in 1959 now costs less than $10. Gordon Moore predicts that the number of components in an IC wills double every year. This is known as Moore's Law.
Doug Engelbart demonstrates in 1968 a word processor, an early hypertext system and a collaborative application: three now common computer applications.




Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel in 1968.
Xerox creates its Palo Alto Research Center - Xerox PARC - in 1969. Its mission is to explore the "architecture of information."
Fairchild Semiconductor introduces a 256-bit RAM chip in 1970.
In late 1970 Intel introduces a 1K RAM chip and the 4004, a 4-bit microprocessor. Two years later comes the 8008, an 8-bit microprocessor.

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: MICRO

Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Traf-O-Data in 1971 to sell their computer traffic-analysis systems.
1972: Gary Kildall writes PL/M, the first high-level programming language for the Intel microprocessor.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are building and selling "blue boxes" in Southern California in 1971. April 1972: Intel introduces the 8008, the first 8-bit microprocessor.Jonathan A. Titus designs the Mark-8, "Your Personal Minicomputer," according to the July, 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics. Popular Electronics features the MITS Altair 8800 on its cover, January 1975. It is hailed as the first "personal" computer. Thousands of orders for the 8800 rescue MITS from bankruptcy. Pictured below: The Homebrew Computer Club in 1975. Paul Allen and Bill Gates develop BASIC for the Altair 8800. Microsoft is born.1977: Apple is selling its Apple II for $1,195, including 16K of RAM but no monitor.







Software Arts develops the first spreadsheet program,
Visicalc, by the spring of 1979. It is released in October and is an immediate success. Copies shipped per month rise from 500 to 12,000 between 1979 and 1981. By 1980 Apple has captured 50% of the personal computer market.
In 1980 Microsoft is approached by IBM to develop BASIC for its personal computer project. The IBM PC is released in August, 1981.
The Apple Macintosh debuts in 1984. It features a simple, graphical interface, uses the 8-MHz, 32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU, and has a built-in 9-inch B/W screen.
Microsoft Windows 1.0 ships in November, 1985.
Motorola announces the 68040, a 32-bit 25MHz microprocessor.
Microsoft's sales for 1989 reach $1 billion, the first year to do so.
A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: NETWORK

Timesharing, the concept of linking a large numbers of users to a single computer via remote terminals, is developed at MIT in the late 50s and early 60s.





1962: Paul Baran of RAND develops the idea of distributed, packet-switching networks.
ARPANET goes online in 1969.
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf develop the basic ideas of the Internet in 1973.
In 1974 BBN opens the first public packet-switched network - Telenet.
A UUCP link between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University establishes USENET in 1979. The first MUD is also developed in 1979, at the University of Essex.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) is established as the standard for ARPANET in 1982.
1987: the number of network hosts breaks 10,000.1989: the number of hosts breaks 100,000. Tim Berners-Lee develops the World Wide Web. CERN releases the first Web server in 1991. 1992: the number of hosts breaks 1,000,000.
The World Wide Web sports a growth rate of 341,634% in service traffic in its third year, 1993.
The main U.S. Internet backbone traffic begins routing through commercial providers as NSFNET reverts to a research network in 1994.
The Internet 1996 World Exposition is the first World's Fair to be held on the internet.
Early Computing Machines
3000 BC: Abacus
The history of the computer begins back in 3000 BC. It was at this time that the abacus was invented. The abacus is a simple counting aid that was used to help people to perform mathematical computations. The abacus is believed to have originated in Asia Minor-more specifically in Babylonia (which is now present-day Iraq), but the form of the abacus that we are most commonly associated with today has its origins in ancient China. An abacus is composed of a rectangular frame that is divided horizontally into two decks: the upper deck and the lower deck. In other words, the beads on the upper deck are slid downwards while the beads on the lower deck slide upwards.
1623: First Mechanical Calculator
Wilhelm Schickard invents the first mechanical calculator in 1623. Schickard's calculator can work with 6 digits, but unfortunately it never goes beyond the prototype stage and was never produced.
1642-1645: Pascaline
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a French mathematician and philosopher builds the Pascaline, also known as the Arithmetic Machine. This mechanical calculator was built to help Pascal's father with his work collecting taxes. It had the capability to do addition and subtraction with up to eight digits, and ran on a series of gears. There were two types of gears: one-tooth gears and ten-teeth gears. The Pascaline was the first mechanical calculator to be actually produced and distributed. Manufacturing and selling of this machine began in 1652 and ended the same year. Very few of the machines were sold. This is most likely because the calculator actually cost more than the people whose work it replaced, and additionally, its gears tended to jam frequently.
1804-1805: Jacquard Loom
Joseph-Marie Jacquard builds the Jacquard Loom. This automatic loom made use of punch cards, which controlled the machine and made the machine programmable. In other words, the instructions of the machine could be changed. By inserting different punch cards into the loom, different patterns could be woven.
1820: Arithrometer
The Arithrometer, built by Charles Zavier and Thomas de Colmar, makes its debut in 1820. The Arithrometer, able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, was the first commercially produced calculator.








Despite this fact, it was never produced at very large quantities. The downside of this calculator was its slowness, which is due to the fact that it was run on wheels. The operator would have to enter the number, and then crank the wheels by hand. Later, in the 1880s, the Arithrometer was remodeled and made sturdier and more reliable. It was particularly useful to engineers and to insurance companies and was widely used until World War I.
1822-1833: Difference Engine
Charles Babbage (1791-1871), an English mathematics professor, comes up with the ideaof the Difference Engine, a mechanical. This machine was automatic and was also commanded by a fixed instruction program. Additionally, it used decimal digits (the numbers 0 through 9). These digits were represented by certain positions on wheels. As the wheels rotate, the numbers would advance. Furthermore, the Difference Engine had an area for the temporary storage of data, and it also was able to print the results of its operations., Babbage was unable to finish producing the Difference Engine.
1834-1846: Analytical Engine
Abandoning his idea of the Difference Engine, Charles Babbage comes up with the idea of an Analytical Engine. Like his Difference Engine, Babbage was never able to complete this machine. The Analytical Engine was to be a general-purpose mechanical computer that would be able to solve ANY mathematical problem. Using punch cards, the Analytical Engine could be programmed to perform many different operations. The reader and the printer were the input and output devices of the machine. An input device is something used to enter information into a compute. Unfortunately, Babbage was only able to construct a portion of this machine and was never successful in turning his wonderful idea into reality.
1843: Lady Lovelace: First Computer Programmer
Augusta Ada Byron, the daughter of poet Lord Byron, was born in 1815 and died in 1852. This countess of Lovelace had taught herself geometry and had also studied other aspects of mathematics. She first met Charles Babbage in 1833, and she later helped him to develop the Analytical Engine A decade later, in 1843, Lady Lovelace published an analysis of the Analytical Engine, in which she not only described the machine and its functions, but in which she also formulated an outline for the basis of computer programming.
1874: Typewriter
Christopher Latham Sholes invented a new typewriter in 1874 that was both fast and commercially successful. Sholes' typewriter had the QWERTYUIOP keyboard that is found on all modern computers today. Before typewriters were invented, clerks were forced to decipher handwritten documents.
1890: Hollerith Tabulator







Herman Hollerith (1859-1929) developed an efficient way to conduct the information gathering and collecting of the United States census. Before, clerks had to travel from city to city-gathering information for the census. This was extremely tedious work and it took hours, if not days to complete. The 1880 census took seven years to finish and was 21,000 pages long!
Hollerith established a new way in which to do the census. A tabulator is a machine that could list the data it was given in table form.
In 1896, Hollerith established the Tabulating Machine Company to market his invention. Years later, in 1911, this company merged with the Computing Scale Company (which manufactured scales for shopkeepers) and with the International Time Recording Company (which produced automatic recording equipment that would calculate the times employees entered and left a workplace).
FIRST GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1940s-1956)
Generally, the computers built during the World War II era are known as the first generation computers. These are considered the first computers, and were extremely different from the computers we see today. These primitive computers relied on vacuum tubes and magnetic drums. The 1st generation computers were also extremely slow.
1939-1942: Atanasoff-Barry Computer
The Atanasoff-Barry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic computer. It was developed by physics and mathematics professor John Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Barry. This computer used the binary system found in modern computers and its method for storing data is quite similar to that of the modern computer. However, in 1942, Atanasoff was recruited to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory to help with war research, and the ABC was never properly put into working order.
1941: Z3
A German named Konrad Zuse invented the Z3, a computer used to design airplanes and missiles. It was the first program-controlled processor.
1943: Colossus
Built in December of 1943 in Bletchly Park (a research center a few miles north of London), Colossus is a computer specifically designed for code breaking. It was used by the British during World War II to break German coded messages.
1944: Harvard Mark I
Howard Aiken proposes the idea of a fully automatic computer in 1937. With the help of IBM, Aiken was able to develop the Mark I by 1944. The Mark I was about 50 feet wide and 8 feet tall, and it was able to handle 23 digit numbers. In addition to the four basic operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, the Mark I was also able to perform trigonometric and probability functions. To input data and instructions, the computer used paper tapes, which were merely toilet-paper-like rolls of punch cards. For output, the Mark I printed the results using two electric typewriters.
1943-1946: ENIAC
In April of 1943, the building of the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC) commenced. Developed by colleagues John Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert Junior and built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, ENIAC was the first general-purpose, all-electronic, programmable digital computer. It cost $400,000 to build and it occupied 50 feet by 30 feet of floor space. This humongous computer consisted of 18,000 vacuum tubes (used to process data), 70,000 resistors (used to resist the flow of electric current), 10,000 capacitors (the part of an electrical circuit used to store charge), 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays (used to activate switches when changes in voltages occur). In addition, it weighed 30 tons and used up 160 kilowatts of electrical power. That's nearly enough to dim every single light in a city as big as Philadelphia! The initial purpose of the ENIAC was to compute the values for artillery range tables, but its first actual task was to make certain calculations for the construction of a hydrogen bomb.







The giant computer made use of plug boards, through which its instructions were entered, and it also made use of conditional branching. Conditional branching gave the ENIAC flexibility, allowing it to execute the data. The ENIAC also contained accumulators, special registers used to store data, and in addition the computer used a digital number system rather than the binary system used in modern computers today. Furthermore, the computer operated at extremely fast speeds and had the capability to perform 5,000 operations per second.
The ENIAC was used from February 1946 until October 1955.
1945: EDVAC
John von Neumann (1903-1957), a mathematician and physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, played a key role in the development of the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC). The EDVAC was a successor to the ENIAC, and it had been designed to hopefully correct the weaknesses and problems of its predecessor. The EDVAC had a memory, which held the stored information and data. It was this stored memory that allowed for the EDVAC to be stopped and resumed at various times. The EDVAC also had a central processing unit (CPU), which can be found in many modern computers
1944-1945: Plankalkul
Plankalkul ("Plan Calculus"), developed by Konrad Zuse, was the first real programming language. Plankalkul made use of structured data, in which the records in the database was, a mixture of alphabetic and numeric data.
1947: Transistors





Transistors were first developed in 1947 by Bell Telephone laboratories. They replaced vacuum tubes, which were big, bulky, costly, and unreliable. Transistors are most often used to regulate the flow of an electrical current and to switch electricity on and off.
1948: SSEC
The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was developed by IBM. It occupied space 25 feet by 40 feet and used punch cards, punched tape, vacuum tubes, and relays. It could do 50 multiplications per second, but it was not successful because of its high cost. However, it was of some use. In 1969, it produced tables that were used to plot the course of the spaceship Apollo's flight to the moon.
1949: EDSAC
Maurice Wilkes was a mathematician and a physicist at Cambridge University in 1959 when, inspired by the creation of EDVAC, he designed the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). The EDSAC was the first practical stored-program computer (a computer using its memory for the storage of data), although by today's standards, it would certainly be anything but practical.
1945-1951: Whirlwind
The Whirlwind computer is the result of a project conducted by Jay Forrester and Robert Everrett at MIT. Started in 1945, it took six years before the Whirlwind would be completed in 1951. conditions and to respond accurately to changes such as airspeed, altitude, as well as various other conditions.

1951: UNIVAC
The UNIVAC, or the Universal Automatic Computer, was developed in 1951 by John Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert Junior, the creators of the ENIAC. It was a commercial data-processing computer and was generally sold to governments or other commercial businesses, such as the United States Census Bureau and General Electric. In all, 48 of the machines were sold. Although not as big as the ENIAC, the UNIVAC was still humongous compared to today's computers. The UNIVAC was right in predicting that Dwight D. Eisenhower would become the United State's next president.





1953: IBM 701
The IBM 701 was the first electrical computer. In three years, 19 of these machines were sold.
1954: IBM 650
The IBM 650 was the first mass-produced computer. Despite the fact that only 450 of these were sold in one year, a small number compared to today's statistics, far more of these were sold than any other machine before it. The 650 made use of magnetic drums, which allowed for fast access to stored material.
SECOND GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1956-1963)
The computers built in the 1950s and 1960s are considered the 2nd generation computers. These computers make use of the transistors invented by Bell Telephone laboratories and they had many of the same components as the modern-day computer. For instance, 2nd generation computers typically had a printer, some sort of tape or disk storage, operating systems, stored programs, as well as some sort of memory. These computers were also generally more reliable and were solid in design.
1957: FORTRAN
FORTRAN, an acronym for Formula Translator was the first successful programming language. This language used words and sentences instead of the binary machine codes that had been commonplace in computers prior to the 1950s.





useful in that given a single statement, many instructions would be produced. FORTAN created programs that were just as good as those produced by human programmers. Not only was it one of the most successful programming languages ever, but it also dominated many other languages for years.
1959: COBOL
COBOL, the Common Business Oriented Language, was invented in 1959. This is a business programming language that allowed for computer programs to be easily read.
1960: PDP-1
DEC, or the Digital Equipment Corporation was founded by Kenneth Olsen and Harland Anderson in 1957. In 1960, DEC introduced the Programmed Data Processor, or PDP-1.The PDP-1 could be sold at such a low price because it did not contain many advanced peripherals and software. In other computers, these advanced systems amounted to nearly 80% of the computers' cost.
1961: IBM 1400 Series
The IBM 1400 Series were a major breakthrough for IBM. The first computer in this series is the IBM 1401. The 1401 was a computer system that used transistors instead of the vacuum tubes found in previous IBM computers. The system contained many peripherals, which included, among others, a new high-speed printer. This printer could print 600 lines per minute! The total cost of an IBM 1401 was $150,000. 12,000 of these computers were produced.
1962: SpaceWar!
Space War is the first interactive computer game. It was developed by MIT students Slug Russell, Shag Graetz, and Alan Kotok for the PDP-1 computer. In this game, players must battle against enemy spaceships and face obstacles like the gravity of the sun. The players used primitive joysticks to maneuver their ships. SpaceWar has helped to inspired future video games.
Late 1960s: Integrated Circuit
Introduced in the 1960s simultaneously by Texas Instruments and by Fairchild Semi-Conductor, the integrated circuit combines many tiny transistors and other electrical components onto a small silicon chip. It replaced the need for individual transistors. Later, these integrated circuits were refined so that one small chip could contain thousands of transistors, as well as other similar components. As more and more components were squeezed into a small silicon chip, the size of computers gradually decreased.
THIRD GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1964-1971)
The 3rd Generation Computers were generally much smaller in size than the 2nd and 1st generation computers. This is because these newer computers made us of integrated circuits and semiconductors (a type of material that had the properties of an insulator and a conductor). 3rd generation computers also contained operating systems, which acted as overseers to the performance of a computer and which allowed computers to run different programs at once.
1964-1965: IBM 360
The IBM 360 was introduced by IBM (duh!) in April of 1964, and was finally delivered in 1965. It was not actually a single computer, but was rather a family of six computers and their peripherals. The first models of the IBM 360 used transistors, but later these computers made a transition from transistors to integrated circuits.
1965: PDP-8
The PDP-8 was a successor to the PDP-1. Because it was the first computer to successfully make use of integrated circuits, it was much smaller and cheaper compared to other computers available at the same time. Five years later, this price was reduced to only $3,000. The PDP-8 was relatively simple in design-physically, logically, and electronically. It only had 4,096 words of memory, and its word length was only 12 bits. Minicomputers are medium-sized computers that were much cheaper than the larger and bulkier mainframe computers.
1966: HP-2115
With the invention of the HP-2115, the company Hewlett Packard enters the computer business.
1969: UNIX
At the AT & T Bell Laboratories, programmers Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed a new type of operating system known as UNIX. C was specifically designed for UNIX. Because UNIX used C, it was able to be used in any computer system. This was a big achievement at the time!
1970s: GUI
GUI (graphical user interface, pronounced gooey) was designed by the Xerox Corporation. Users could click on these icons to move and manipulate the folders and other tools. GUI made using computers much easier and is currently found in modern-day computers.
FOURTH GENERATION COMPUTERS
(1971-Present)
The 4th generation computers are marked by the usage of integrated circuits and microprocessors. As the years passed, computers became smaller and smaller, and their prices became lower and lower. Millions of components could be placed onto a single silicon chip. Computers became more efficient and more reliable, and they could perform more and more operations. They began to catch the eye of the general public, and soon more sophisticated software and equipment were designed. Networks became commonplace, and the whole world was connected by the Internet and by the World Wide Web.
1971: Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit microprocessor. Microprocessors are integrated circuits that contain thousands and millions of transistors. The Intel 4004 is the essence of a general-purpose computer. It performed many input and output operations and was also able to read and respond to instructions stored in its memory. The Intel 4004 was first used on March 2, 1972 in the Pioneer 10 space probe.
1972: Intel 8008
In November of 1972, Intel came out with a new 8-bit processor, known as the Intel 8008.

1974: Intel 8080
The Intel 8080 is a re-engineered version of the Intel 8008. It had a larger and more versatile instruction set.





1975: Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 is often called the first personal computer. It was developed by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS), a small company centered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Altair 8800 was sold as an electronic hobbyist kit for only $397. The Altair computers were of blue box-shaped machines with dimensions of 17 inches by 18 inches by 7 inches. They were very simple, and so in complex that they did not even has a keyboard or display. It is hard to believe, but it is the in-complexity of the Altair 8800 that helped to establish the personal computer industry. Because of its limitations, the Altair allowed for other companies to refine the computer and do develop more software.
One such example of software developed for the Altair 8800 is the development of a version of the programming language, BASIC, for this computer. The BASIC programming language designed for the Altair was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the cofounders of the software giant, Microsoft.
Microsoft was not the only company to develop programs and software for the Altair. In fact, more and more companies began entering the software business by developing software and peripherals for the Altair 8800.
1976: CP/M
Developed in 1976 by Gary Kildall of the company Digital Research, CP/M was a popular operating system that made it possible for one version of a program to run on a variety of computers.
1976: Apple II
Apple Computer was started by Stephen G. Wozniak and Steven P. Jobs. In 1976, the company introduced the Apple II to the personal computer market. The computer also was able to be plugged into a standard household outlet.
1979: VisiCalc
VisiCalc, standing for Visible Calculator, is the first personal computer financial analysis tool. This software was developed by Harvard business graduate Dan Bricklin and programmer Bob Frankston. VisiCalc was able to give immediate responses to "what if" questions. It turned personal computers like the Apple II into business machines and was an overnight success.
1981: Osborne I
Invented by Adam Osborne, the Osborne I was the world's first portable computer. By today's standards, it wouldn't exactly be portable because of the fact that it weighed a whopping 24 pounds. The computer had a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes of memory, a modem, and two 5-¼ floppy disk drives. It sold for $1,795.





1981: DN100
The DN100 was the first workstation. It was developed by Apollo Computers, and it had much more power than some of the minicomputers around at the time.

1983: Lisa
The Lisa, invented by Apple Computer, was the first PC to use graphical user interface. It had one MB of RAM and had a 12 inch black and white monitor. The Lisa had two 5-¼ floppy disk drives, 5 MB of profile hard drive, and it used a Motorola 680000 microprocessor.
1983: Microsoft Word
The powerful word processor used in nearly every household today, Microsoft Word, makes its debut as "Multi-Tool Word" in 1983. Microsoft Word can be used for all sorts of word-processing tasks and for creating all sorts of text documents. It is now widely used and widely distributed. Two years after introducing Word to the general public, the company, Microsoft, then introduces its now-famous Microsoft Windows.
1983: Compaq Computer Corporation




In 1983, Compaq Computer Corporation built a portable computer, a clone of the IBM PC. Looking like a sewing machine, Compaq's computer weighed 38 pounds (13 kg). It was an immediate success, bringing in $110 million in its first year of sales.
1984: Apple Macintosh
The Apple Macintosh was designed by Apple Computer and had many of the same features as the Lisa computer, also designed by Apple. The main goal of the Macintosh was to create a computer that would accommodate as many as Lisa's features as possible at a much lower price. The Apple Macintosh used a 32-bit Motorola 68000 central processing unit and had a 9 inch black and white screen. It was first sold for $2,500.
1985: Microsoft Windows Operating System
Microsoft makes its debut with its first windows operating system. The new Apple Macintosh had shadowed the personal computers, and now the Microsoft Windows Operating System gives PC compatibles the same capacities as the Macintosh.
1985: C++ Programming Language
C++ is a general-purpose programming language that was derived from the C programming language. It had many of the C's capabilities, such as the ability to efficiently deal with objects such as bits, bytes, and words and the ability to efficiently implement user-defined type.
1989: SimCity
In 1989, the popular computer game, SimCity, was developed by Will Wright and Jeff Braun. SimCity was a video game that used simulators. The player starts with a plot of land, and he or she must build houses, buildings, roads, and other objects to ensure the survival of the city..
1990: Windows 3.0
In 1990, the software giant Microsoft released a new version of Windows. Windows 3.0 was the first successful version of the software. It was user-friendly and it sported a new interface with new designs that allowed personal computers to support many images and other graphical applications
Recent Developments
The past few years have seen many new developments in the computer industry. As the years have progressed, computers have become smaller and smaller. Laptops and handheld computers have slowly evolved. Weighing anywhere between 4 ounces and 6 pounds, these laptops and handhelds are the very essence of the computer world today. Have fun exploring some of the new innovations found throughout the world today!
DVD
Although not an extremely new invention, the DVD player has just been coming into popularity recently as more and more movies are coming out in DVD and as more and more of the general public are buying DVD players. Also, it is just recently that DVD players have been being built into computers.
Pentium 4 Processor
Microprocessors (also known as the central processing unit or CPU) are the very heart of computers. It is up to the microprocessors to interpret and execute instructions and to perform operations. Throughout the years, scientists have found ways to compress more and more information onto the small silicon chip we call a microprocessor. The Pentium 4, developed by Intel, is a new super-fast processor. It is the successor to Intel's other famous processors, the Pentium 1, 2, and 3. Intel's Pentium microprocessors are found in nearly all personal computers! The Pentium 4 is a new microprocessor with amazing capabilities! It can operate at speeds of up to 1.80 GHz, which is extremely fast! It can also convert MP3s extremely fast, and with an enhanced multimedia support, it can additionally encode videos at high speeds.
Intel Wireless Series
The company, Intel, has developed a series of wireless peripherals for computers. All of these allow for easy and comfortable computer usage.
Base Station
The Base Station is at the very heart of the Intel Wireless Series. All the wireless peripherals connect to the computer via the Base Station. This product allows for the connection of up to eight other wireless products to a personal computer and to the Internet.
Wireless Keypad
The Wireless Keypad is a keypad that does not need to be connected to the computer via wires! It can operate anywhere within a 3 meter radius of the Base Station, and it even includes a folding palm rest! The Wireless Keyboard is designed for as much comfort to the user as possible. It allows for more movement and can be placed at a comfortable location. This keyboard also includes special multimedia keys and it connects to the computer via a PS/2 or USB connection.
Wireless Mouse
The Wireless Mouse, like the Wireless Keyboard is specifically designed for comfort and mobility. It can be positioned anywhere within a 3 meter radius of the Base Station. This maximizes the comfort of the user. In addition, the mouse contains a scrolling wheel and three programmable buttons.
Game Pad
The Game Pad consists of controllers that are specially designed for various computer games. Like the mouse and keyboard, it, too, works anywhere within a 3 meter radius of the Base Station and is designed for comfort.
Call-Waiting Modem
Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that whenever you go online, you can't receive phone calls? Well, Actiontec Electronics, Inc. designed a call-waiting feature on modems. This feature screens incoming phone calls while you are online. You can either choose to ignore the call if you feel that it is un-important, or you can choose to pick up the phone and talk with whoever is calling. Choosing to pick up the phone will not drop the Internet connection! Previously, there had been a feature on modems that would put the modem on hold.
iTunes, iMovie 2, and iDVD
Apple, Inc. recently designed the new software, iTunes, iMovie 2, and iDVD. They are the very essence of computers today!
iTunes

iTunes is a software used to operate with all sorts of MP3 functions. It can import music from CDs to MP3s and it can also create libraries of MP3s. Using iTunes, the user can listen to radio stations broadcasting anything from country to pop to jazz to classical! Most importantly, iTunes plays all the music smoothly and with a great effect!

iMovies
iMovies is a software used to make desktop movies. Users can make their own movies, and then they can add special visual and sound effects. Once finished, they can share their awesome creations with friends and family!
iDVD
iDVD allows users to make their own DVDs. The DVDs created are not some poor-quality products, but actually have many of the same features as Hollywood created DVDs! The general public can now create their very own high-quality movies!
iMac
The iMac is a user-friendly Macintosh developed by Apple, Inc. It is appealing to the general public because of its availability in spiffy colors, such as Indigo, Flower Power, Blue Dalmatian, and Graphite. In addition, it has some of Apple's software, iTunes and iMovies 2, installed. It also uses Apple's famous operating system, Mac OS X and the Apple Pro Mouse and Apple Pro Keyboard. The Apple Pro Keyboard has 108 keys, some of which include special keys that when pressed, can adjust the audio volume, can mute the speakers, and can eject CDs from the drive.
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IBM ThinkPad
The IBM ThinkPad is extremely light and portable laptops. It clocks in at only 3.1 pounds and is only 1 inch thick. It is wireless and allows for cable-free Internet connectivity! This laptop computer demonstrates the modern ideology of light and portable personal computers.
The Future
Computers have already evolved so much since they were first introduced in the early 1900s. Now, computers have dramatically decreased in size and have dramatically increased in speed. However, computers will continue to evolve throughout the future of mankind. The living conditions of humans in the next few millenniums will completely depend upon the types of computer technology innovative minds come up with.
Without doubt, within the next few decades, people will be able to accomplish almost everything needed to survive without having to leave their desk. All the computers throughout the world will be connected via the Internet, which has been rightfully nicknamed the "Information Superhighway." Currently, there is a Digital Divide, or a barrier dividing those who own computers and have access to the Internet (the "haves") and those who do not own computers and who do not have Internet access (the "have notes"). As more schools and libraries are getting Internet access and as computers are becoming cheaper and cheaper, the Digital Divide will gradually disintegrate. Already, the Internet is becoming more widespread as more families and households are getting involved in the digital world. In addition to the breaching of the Digital Divide, there will be more technology to make our lives both easier and more comfortable in the future. This new technology will completely change our ways of life! Below are a few examples of the new technology that are being explored
EMERGENCE OF LAPTOPS

Laptop Computers in the K-12 Classroom
Over the past decade, many schools have investigated the educational possibilities of mobile computing. More recently, an increasing number of K-12 schools are implementing the use of laptop computers. Improvements in portable computing technology and examples of successful pilot programs using laptops and other portables have inspired many K-12 schools to consider laptops for their students.
EMERGENCE OF LAPTOPS IN SCHOOLS
Organized laptop programs in higher education date as far back as 1988 when Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, began providing notebook computers (paid for from tuition) to all incoming freshman. Now more than 50 postsecondary institutions worldwide require at least some of their students to use laptops (Brown, 1999). Throughout the 1990s, a number of private schools in the United States and abroad began requiring ownership of laptops. In 1996, inspired by the successful use of laptops in Australian schools, the Microsoft Corporation and Toshiba began one of the most high-profile programs now underway, currently known as Microsoft's Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL) Program (Healey, 1999). Technology corporations, such as NetSchools (http://www.studypro.com/), NoteSys Inc. (http://www.notesys.com/), Apple (http://www.apple.com/education/), and others are promoting the use of laptops in K-12 education, providing hardware packages for schools, and in some cases, software and technical support as well.
TRANSITIONS TO LAPTOPS
How are schools integrating laptops into their technology infrastructure? Microsoft commissioned an ongoing study of Anytime Anywhere Learning, published as the Rockman Report. In their study, Rockman (1998) identified five models of laptop use currently in place at the K-12 level:
* Concentrated-each student has his or her own laptop for use at home or in school
* Class set-a school-purchased classroom set is shared among teachers
* Dispersed-in any given classroom, there are students with and without laptops
* Desktop-each classroom is permanently assigned a few laptops for students to share
* Mixed-some combination of the above models.
DOES RESEARCH SUPPORT THE USE OF LAPTOPS?
Several studies suggest educational benefits related to laptop use. Specific benefits noted include increased student motivation (Gardner 1994, Rockman, 1998), a shift toward more student-centered classroom environments (Stevenson, 1998; Rockman, 1998), and better school attendance than students not using laptops (Stevenson, 1998). In his study of a laptop pilot program in Beaufort, South Carolina, Stevenson (1998) also reported that students with laptops demonstrated a "sustained level of academic achievement" during their middle school years, as opposed to students not using laptops who tended to decline during this same period. He also noted that these academic benefits were most significant in at-risk student populations.
In their study of laptop use in middle school science classrooms, Fisher and Stolarchuk (1998) found that those laptop classrooms in which skills and the process of inquiry were emphasized had the most positive impact on student learning and attitudes. According to Rockman, a majority of teachers in laptop schools reported an increase in both cooperative learning and project-based instruction. Other research has not supported the educational benefits of laptop use.
Laptop Lessons: Exploring the Promise of One-to-One ComputinWhen Maine Governor Angus King recently proposed using the state's $50 million surplus to outfit every seventh- and eighth-grade student and teacher in the state with a laptop computer, the phrase "laptop learning" became headline news across the nation. And when the New York City Board of Education approved a plan to provide the city's fourth-grade students and teachers with notebook computers next year-and eventually deploy some 850,000 portable devices to all students, teachers, and administrators in the system-it confirmed that laptop programs have indeed become a full-fledged movement.
The larger premise of the laptop program, however, is that one-to-one computing will ultimately revolutionize the way teachers teach and the way students learn-a desirable and even essential outcome for the digital age. Here, we look at what we know about laptop learning so far-and what challenges schools just starting out can expect to encounter.
Teaching with laptops – introduction

New technology, such as the laptop computer, benefits science educators in two major ways. Technology expands our choices for teaching and facilitating learning in science, and it also provides opportunities to reflect on effective teaching practice. The 1999 Toshiba/NSTA Laptop Learning Challenge precipitated descriptions of the many ways teachers integrate lightweight portable computers in K–12 science and mathematics, in both schools and informal science education settings. Twenty exemplary lessons were selected to share through the NSTA Web site and a CD-ROM. If you are a science methodology instructor, an in-service professional development facilitator, or a teacher reflecting on your own teaching practice, the following ideas and activities can help make constructive use of the exemplary lessons.


Learning with laptops – New tools create new oppurtinity

Latest News and Reports (5-7-2006)
Working Less to Work Smarter
I've been thinking quite a bit about change, schools, and information technology. My developing "theory" on this subject can be found on this wiki.
Following are some email messages I wrote on this subject as part of a listserve discussion.
The New York Times had an article about airline seats on April 24th. The following two sentences caught my attention.
"With new materials and modern designs, manufacturers are creating seats with an increasingly smaller profile to provide more legroom. Airlines, however, are using the additional space to squeeze in more rows."
Anyone for a four day work week?
IMPORTANCE OF LAPTOPS

Student on a Budget

Laptops are delicate and you'll probably want to purchase new, so consider saving money by buying less expensive processors like Intel's Celeron or AMD's Athlon chips. Buy a laptop with as little RAM as possible from the retailer and shop for good deals on RAM separately. A good-sized hard drive with a read-only CD-ROM and DVD-ROM will get you by until you can afford to upgrade.
Professional
Consider a serious laptop computer that you can use at work and on the go. Laptops can be heavy, so if you plan to carry it around with you, look for something in the 4 to 6 lb range. Be sure to buy a laptop with a newer Pentium-M or Centrino processor to prolong your battery life.
Gamer
Buying a laptop to play video games with? Look for a graphics card that comes with its own Video RAM to boost the reality-factor and a screen that is at least 15 inches. You'll need plenty of RAM, at least 512MB and the fastest processor you can afford. If you'll be carrying it with you frequently, look for a laptop that weighs 4 to 6 lbs for the best blend of size and portability.


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New Laptop Technology You Need To Know
(Before Buying Your Next Laptop)
Laptop or notebook computer technology is advancing at a blistering speed. Ferrari fast. So fast that by the time you purchase your new laptop - it's probably already obsolete or out of date. A sobering thought considering the hefty prices you have to pay for a high-end laptop.
What's the ordinary laptop buyer to do?
What you really have to keep in mind are the outcomes of all this new technology. Basically, these new technologies have made laptops smaller, faster and more powerful. With every new improvement the laptop is closing the gap between its main rival - the desktop computer.Some major computer makers are taking note of this trend towards more powerful, smaller computers. Even the desktop computer is morphing! Just look at the sleek design of the new Apple iMac G5 - gone is the bulky tower - in its place is a well designed desktop computer that's almost a laptop!In order for you to tech-proof your next laptop purchase, here's a quick run down of some recent Notebook Developments:
PCI Express
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express is a new standard for expansion cards that comes in different versions. Presently, we have the x16 and x1 lanes, which will be followed by x4 and x8 versions. It offers increased bandwidth for example, x1 lane offers 500MB/sec instead of just 133MB/sec for PCI.
All computers, including laptops have different buses, (collection of wires) that transmit data from one component to another.
PCI Express is a great improvement and will make your laptop faster.
Graphics Card
These are always improving. A Graphics Card handles the graphics or visuals on your notebook. If 3D graphics and games is a pastime - you will want to buy the highest quality system. Some of the higher end products are:
 ATi Mobility Radeon 9800, X800, and FireGL V3200 or
 Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900.
If you can, go with a NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 graphics card or for the real game diehards - wait for the debut of NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 that features NVIDIA's TurboCache technology.
64 Bit Laptops
Most systems today run on the 32 Bit System. Keep in mind, the major difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit system is the amount of memory that they support. Around 4 GB for 32-bit and 8 GB and up for the 64-bit. Right now - Intel, Apple, and AMD all offer 64-bit systems.
Do you need all this memory? No, for the average laptop user it amounts to overkill. However, if you're interested in gaming, desktop publishing, or the graphic arts you will benefit from 64-bit technology.
Dual Core Notebooks
Two is better than one!
Dual core laptops are now on the market. The gaming industry is the starting point for many of these advanced systems.
For example, the British Laptop maker Rockdirect now produces Xtreme 64, a gaming laptop with AMD’s new dual core Athlon 64 X2 processor. This same laptop also sports the ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT graphics card that features 16 pixel pipelines,an industry first for notebooks.
Built-in Cellular Modem
Most high-end laptops now come with an integrated tri-mode 802.11a/b/g for wireless WI-FI connections. Some recent models, like the Sony's New Ultra-Portable VAIO VGN-T350P, are raising the bar - it has the worlds first 'Built-in Cellular Modem'. You can use your cell phone to connect to the Internet. This may be a great advantage since finding a 'Hot Spot' in some parts of the world can still be difficult.
Computer Notebooks from Acer
Acer notebooks or laptops come from the large Acer Group of Taiwan, which is one of the world's biggest computer makers. Founded by Taiwanese tycoon Stan Shih in 1976, Acer is better known for its peripherals (monitors and scanners) than it is for its notebook computers.
However, it does produce some high top quality notebooks that are listed in this Notebook Guide. Mainly, the very popular Acer - TravelMate, a top rated tablet pc that makes many top ten lists. These very versatile tablet laptops are worth considering if you do a lot of note taking – especially popular with 'in-the-field' professionals, like salesmen, real estate agents and so on.
Maybe not exactly the strangest site you will see while checking out various laptops, but it will definitely be one of the most pleasing!
Computer Laptops from Dell
Dell is perhaps one of the most recognized brand names in notebooks or laptops. It has established a well earned reputation for a quality product at a reasonable price.
Dell laptops or notebooks should be on every one's list. If you're considering buying a notebook don't rule out Dell. The company was founded by Michael Dell in 1984, and produces some top rated laptops that made it into this Notebook Guide. Dell introduced its first notebook computer in 1989.
First, there is the 'Thin and Light' entry Dell Inspiron 700m, a very popular choice for many students or college students. Lightweight and high performance makes it a top choice for best student laptop.
Thin and light class notebook, the Dell Inspiron 700m is very popular with college students:
Dell Inspiron 700m
Second, there is Dell Inspiron 9200, a desktop replacement
Desktop Replacement
Dell Inspiron 9200
Third, a very powerful Gaming laptop
Dell Inspiron XPS Extreme
Fourth, there is the highly rated yet very affordable or budget laptop - the Dell Inspiron 1000. You can check this laptop out by clicking the link below:
Budget Notebook
Dell Inspiron 1000
10% off top DELL memory upgrades
Computer Laptops from HP Compaq
First, Compaq was started in 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto. These three managers left Texas Instruments and started their own computer company - Compaq which shipped in 1983, more than 53,000 portable PCs.
It quickly established itself as the technology leader in America and around the world. It merged with the Hewlett-Packard Corporation in May 3, 2002 – creating a very powerful world-class company and computer maker.
The Hewlett-Packard Company was founded by William Hewlett and David Packard in Palo Alto, CA in 1939. Its first product was a device or oscillator for measuring sound, one of its first clients was Walt Disney Studios.
Perhaps, better known for its innovative printers and office equipment, Hewlett-Packard entered the computer field with its first personal computer which was called the Touchscreen 150.
The company quickly grew and now HP sells well over 10,000 different elctronic and computerproducts, and has gained a well earned reputation for its quality engineering, as well as for its superior products.

Computer Laptops from IBM!
IBM has become another word for 'professional business quality' in the world. It stands for top quality products that have earned its place in the business world. IBM brings to mind the best professional laptops that the demanding business arena has to offer.
IBM has a long history; it has its roots in the 1910 census in America. It was original known as CTR Computing Tabulating Recording and didn't become known as IBM International Business Machines until 1920, but it had this name in Canada since 1917.
In the early days, IBM produced ways of computing or tabulating worker's time records, company inventories, census gathering, etc.
IBM notebooks or laptops fall into the same category; they point to the best in business notebooks and have the same IBM quality that makes them so popular.
There are many models that are worth your consideration if you're looking at purchasing an IBM laptop or notebook.
IBM was in the news recently because of its deal with China's Largest PC maker - Lenovo, which acquired IBM's personal computer operations.
One of the most highly rated by this Notebook Guide and by many other sites around the net is the ThinkPad T43. It is the latest offering from IBM/Lenovo and has many factors that make it not only the top business notebook on the market but maybe the BEST notebook on the market period.
IBM produces some very highly rated notebooks or laptops. Among their
stand-outs are the top rated IBM notebooks in this simple Notebook Guide.
They are in the 'Ultraportable' Class - IBM ThinkPad X40
In the 'Thin and Light' you have the IBM ThinkPad T42
and the newest IBM ThinkPad T43.
There is definitely something to be said about all things black. This notebook not only looks like the perfect package - it is the perfect package. If you're thinking of purchasing a laptop - give the T43 some deep thought. And when you're done that - think about it some more and if you can just go out and test drive the IBM T43. You won't be able to keep your hands off it for long!
You can't go wrong with an IBM notebook. Check out the whole range of IBM laptops here: IBM Notebooks
Seven Factors You Must Check Before Buying Your Notebook Computer
It is estimated that over 42 million computer notebooks will be produced this year (2005). The market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at a rate of 20% each year according to Taiwanese notebook makers.
And they should know - they make 70% of these notebooks or their components for such major players as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway. The popularity of notebook computers seems to be increasing; they are popping up everywhere -on TV News Desks, in sitcoms, in movies, or in your friend's lap!
They may get even popular as hundred of millions of old desktop PCs are retired in the coming years - one can only guess how many of these old bulky machines will be replaced by these, sleek, sexy up-starts.
So if you are planning to replace your dusty old PC with one of these very capable compact notebook computers - do yourself a favor -consider these Seven major factors BEFORE you buy your Notebook:
1. Size - This is one case where size does matter! It's the main reason you're considering buying a notebook or laptop in the first place. You want something that's lightweight, portable and versatile; to carry on your next business trip, to take to class, or to move from room to room in your home with ease.
Choosing the right size notebook or laptop for your needs does take some consideration. However, your job is made easier because notebooks and laptops have been categorized for you. They are grouped according to size. Here's a quick rundown:
 Tablet PC (smallest) Size of a paper tablet or notepad, less than 3 pounds.
 Ultra Portable (small) <11" x <10” Less than 1.3 inches thick, usually less than 4 pounds.
 Thin and Light (mid-size) 11-14" x <11” 1 to 1.4 inches thick, from 5 to 7 pounds.
 Desktop Replacements (largest) >13" x >11" More than 1.5 inches, more than 7 pounds and up
Please note - the weight here is without the power adapters and accessories
that may be needed with your notebook. Add 2 to 3 pounds for these extras.
2. Hard Drive and others - What size hard drive do you need?
Drives are increasing as notebooks become more compact and more powerful. You'll need only a 20GB or 30GB for most tasks on your notebook. If you handle large graphics or large amount of files (DVDs, M3Ps, etc.) you need more - 60 to 100GB or higher.
Depending on your needs or purpose you will need other Drives such as DVD/CD. You will need a CD-ROM for installing. And a CD-RW drive for burning your own CDs if that's one of the tasks you want your notebook to do. Other options are available -- many notebooks can access or use external drives for data storage, cd burning, etc.
Tip: Many notebooks come pre-loaded with software programs installed, which is great, but these programs take up space on your hard drive -so check to see the size of your 'actual' hard drive you have for your own storage space!
3. Processor - The Processor or CPU is the heart of your notebook or computer. It does the processing and applications. Most people prefer Intel Pentium Processors; the higher the number the faster it will process!
Go with a Pentium 4 - M if you can. It is very expensive but it's extremely fast and permits a longer battery life. May also want to check out the new Intel's Sonoma chipset, this platform will become standard on many high end notebooks soon!
Speed is how fast your computer can process data and perform your tasks. The faster the better! Latest models get up to a blazing 3.6 GHz or more.
Tip: You might also want to check the rotational speed of your notebook's hard disk as it can affect performance a 5,400rpm notebook disk is much faster than a 4,200rpm model. How fast the disk spins, will also determine the performance level of your notebook.
4. RAM (random-access-memory). This is what the computer uses to run applications and data on your operating system. It's generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other operating systems in Windows or Mac.
Video RAM or memory - if game playing or heavy graphic work is the main purpose of your notebook, checks the video RAM. With each new generation of Notebook Technology - RAM keeps increasing, up to 2GB of RAM in some machines!
5. Connections - Until all major connections on notebooks become standard, and they will over time - you have to check the connections of the notebook you're buying. If traveling and portability is the main reason for buying your notebook - make sure it has the connections you need.
Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity, also known as 802.11b which transfers data wirelessly at a maximum rate of 11Mbps for up to 150 feet. There are two other ways of transferring wireless data: 802.11a up to a maximum of 54Mbps and 802.11g which is hybrid of a and b, it is also capable of 4Mbps.
Some notebooks like the Fujitsu LifeBook N6010 have a tri-mode 802.11a/b/g wireless system!
A fully loaded notebook may come with these kinds of connections:
56k Modem, up to 4 USB 2.0 ports, Internal Gigabit LAN, 15-Pin VGA, S-Video, 25-Pin EPP/ECP, Internal 802.11g Internal Wireless LAN, Bluetooth Module and FireWire.
Tip: To avoid disappointment later, always double check these connections with your dealer before you buy your notebook computer. Plug-ins can be a problem, check this before you buy!
6. Battery Life - Check to see what the battery life of your notebook computer will be - check the cost of an extra battery or a docking station. Many notebooks come with different batteries, four cell, 6 cell, 8 cell, etc. - if battery life is important to your needs, get the largest battery.
In most cases, it's best to buy an extra battery if you will do a lot of traveling or 'in-the-field' work.
Battery life is gradually increasing, 2 or 3 hours is common. 5 or 6 hours is considered good. General rule of thumb-- the bigger the notebook, the lower is the battery life.
7. Price/Deal - Shop around before you buy! Old cliches are cliches for a good reason - they hold a lot of truth. Shop around and check out the reviews and prices at many stores, online and offline. Do your homework, read reviews, check out online forums - these places will turn up any problems of a particular model.
Unless you have a local reputable dealer that gives great service and support as well as great warranties or guarantees, it may be best to buy directly from the manufacturer or Notebook Company.
Why?
Usually, factory outlet prices are the lowest prices you will find. The dealer also has his/her reputation on the line, if you can't get quality service from the primary dealer or maker -- you may have a better recourse or action to take than if you're dealing with a reseller out in the boondocks.
The primary producer or maker will have more to lose! So go direct - if you can and buy from the maker's factory or online site.. However, don't always be concerned about getting the best deal or bargain. As well as the price, support and customer service is also extremely important - especially if you're considering buying a notebook online. Check out the warranty, Mr. Murphy. Things do go wrong - just make sure your have a recourse that delivers satisfaction.
So remember these seven factors when buying your computer notebook. If you have to - list them by using your fingers - Size, Hard Drive, Processor, RAM, Connections, Battery Life, and Price. Just be careful how you point those fingers as you list off the different factors before your dealer; armed with the knowledge above there shouldn't be any need for unnecessary rudeness or surprises!
Finding The Right Size Notebook For Your Needs
This is one case where size does matter! It's the main reason you're considering buying a notebook or laptop in the first place. You want something that's lightweight, portable and versatile; to carry on your next business trip, to take to class, or to move from room to room in your home with ease.
As technical specs and capabilities of notebooks improve and even out in the coming years - it may be the only main factor you will have to consider before you buy your notebook.
However, there's a wide variation in the models, sizes, and capabilities of present day notebooks so you do have to figure out which size notebook is best suited for your needs.
To make your job easier, computer notebook or laptops are classified into different groups; here's a quick rundown:
 Tablet PC (smallest) Size of a paper tablet or notepad, less than 3 pounds.
 Ultra Portable (small) <11" x <10” Less than 1.3 inches thick, less than 4 pounds.
 Thin and Light (mid-size) 11-14" x <11” 1 to 1.4 inches thick, from 5 to 7 pounds.
 Desktop Replacements (largest) >13" x >11" More than 1.5 inches, more than 7 pounds and up
And here's a brief summation of each group:
Tablet PC - If size and weight is a problem for you - you just won't or can't carry around anything weighting over 2 or 3 pounds then you should consider the extremely lightweight Tablet PC. It's the lightest PC you will find.
These have a niche all their own and is very suited for "road warriors" and "corridor warriors". You get a fully equipped PC in the form of a letter sized notepad that you can carry to meetings. Some have special digital pens that you can write with - very practical for students, salespeople, teachers, researchers, engineers, health related workers, and other people who find a notebook too cumbersome in a meeting or office setting.
Tablet PC can come in two designs - 'Convertible' and 'Slate' Models.
In the 'convertible' model - a small tablet-sized screen folds over like a notebook with an integrated keyboard and in the 'slate' model - the screen can be removed from the keyboard. Most models carry Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
All the major companies such as Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Toshiba and
Acer...produces Tablet PC's.
Pros - Very lightweight, easy to carry anywhere and great for PowerPoint presentations!
Cons - Don't have all the features of a larger notebook, hard to read outdoors in bright light.

Ultraportable Notebooks
Just as the name implies, these notebooks are very portable. Designed to be easily carried anywhere - airports, meetings, hotels, etc. -- its light weight makes it a favorite of the business traveler. Even though it doesn't have the full functionality of the larger notebooks. If you do a lot of traveling and don't want to lug around a heavier notebook - the UltraPortable is for you.
Pros - It's Portability, easy to conceal (theft is a problem with most notebooks), excellent for the business traveller.
Cons - Many don't have an internal optical drive or floppy drives so you many have to carry these external drives or a docking bay - add 2 or 3 pounds for these extra devices. Don't have all the functions of larger notebooks.
Thin and light Notebooks
Thin and Light Notebooks offer more features or functions than the Utraportables. Thus, they are somewhat heavier and bulkier. If size and weight is not a consideration for your needs - you should try a Thin and Light Notebook.
Most of the better models comes with a Intel Pentium 4 or 4-M. Battery life should be a consideration and the new Pentium 4-M uses less power and gives longer life to your batteries.
Keep in mind the traveling weight of these notebooks, if you have to carry external drives, docking ports, etc. will add 2 or 3 pounds to your weight..
Pros: Lightweight and portable, more functions than an UtraPortable.
Cons: Theft may be a problem (keep an eye on it, make sure it's insured, stencil (your ID on it!), less functions than a full desktop replacement.
Best Notebooks For Students and Why
Students want a laptop or notebook that's lightweight, yet sturdy enough to take a good pounding! They need a notebook that's comfortable enough to lug from class to class - so weight and size is an issue. It has to be small enough to fit comfortable in a backpack or in your arms. Yet, the student notebook or laptop must have great battery life and performance.

Depending on your budget, student laptops also have to be inexpensive.
In other words, the ideal student notebook must have great portability, performance and battery life, yet be lightweight and relatively inexpensive. The class of notebooks best suited to meet all those demands falls in the 'thin and light' and the 'ultraportable' categories of laptops or notebooks.

Some of the best students notebooks are:

 IBM ThinkPad X40
Great student notebook with superior keyboard, sleek style and IBM quality, light and ultra-portable. At 3.2 pounds and very professional this IBM notebook should be on every student's list.
 Panasonic ToughBook Y2
May be on the expensive size for some students, but the Panasonic ToughBook Y2 is a fully packed notebook with solid performance and great battery life at 5 hours and is really light at 3.3 pounds. Should be considered.
 Toshiba - Portégé M200
Those students looking for a Tablet PC for convenient Note Taking should look at the Toshiba Portégé M200. It runs quiet and cool, and is a versatile tablet/laptop combination with an excellent keyboard design.
 IBM ThinkPad T42
Great 'thin and light' notebook, again with the IBM quality that also makes it a perfect choice for the busy college student. Lightweight and portable, in a 5 pound package.
 Dell Inspiron 700m
Dell may be the best choice for a student looking for a relatively
cheap notebook computer or laptop. Good performance at a reasonable
price. Weight at 4.2 pounds.

Refurbished or Used Laptop or Notebook Computer

Students (and parents) should not rule out a used or refurbished laptop or notebook computer. Some great deals can be found, check around computer shops in your area or check online places like Amazon.com which sell relatively cheap refurbished notebooks. refurbished laptops

Reasons all students should have a laptop or notebook computer

Laptops are convenient and useful for note taking, writing compositions, and gathering knowledge and data from the Internet. To remain ompetitive
in a very competitive world - students who have a laptop or notebook computer is at a greater advantage than those without one.

Many parents and students spend 10's of thousands on a good education but fail to invest in a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment that may greatly influence the outcome of that high priced education. So give some serious thought to buying a student notebook or laptop.

A laptop or notebook computer will greatly increase any student's performance level. So choose wisely!
A laptop or notebook computer will greatly increase any student's performance level. So choose wisely!

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF
LAPTOPS AND DESKTOPS

Desktop computers usually come with a vertical chassis, referred to as a tower, which typically sits on the floor under a desk. A monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers are all attached to the tower separately.

Laptop computers, on the other hand, are small, battery-powered, lightweight (1-3 kg) and ideal for those who require portability, such as business people who travel or university students who could then easily move from a dorm room to a library to a lecture hall to a cafe. With a DVD player, laptops can also be used as portable entertainment systems.

Unlike a desktop setup, all accessories are integrated into the laptop (mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc) but external ones may be attached, as well. The prices for these accessories are about the same for both laptop and desktop PCs.

It should be mentioned that many of today's laptops come equipped with integrated wireless networking features (like Intel Centrino mobile technology) so that users can tap into a high-speed internet connection. The PC user must be in the range of a compatible wireless network, known as a hotspot, which is available in some hotels, airport lounges, school campuses, and cafes. Desktop computers usually come with a wired network card, but wireless cards can be purchased.

Why should I buy a laptop instead a desktop?

To insure that a laptop will work well for you, consider all of the possible ideas you have about when and where you would use it! Space considerations are always favorable for laptop use over a full sized desktop computer. If you intend for a laptop to be your only computer, and you will be using at home or in the office with no space limitations, you might want to consider a desktop computer instead. Whereas a laptop computer enables you to work when and where you want, allowing you both ease of operation and trouble free performance. Your computer should enable you to enhance your productivity and make better use of your time and you can use a laptop without being attached to a power outlet.

Why are laptops more popular
Should I buy a laptop or a desktop? Thousands of people face this dilemma every day. Information technology is not only advancing at a great pace but it is making lives better. We have been using desktops way back since 1940 when the first computer was invented. However, the increasing dependence on computers has given an impetus to develop more advanced computers like laptops or notebooks. Though desktop is the king, laptops are gaining ground these days due to its portability.

In 2000, one in 10 home computers bought worldwide was a laptop, these days it is one in five. According to the research firm Current Analysis, laptops have for the first time outsold desktops in the US in a calendar month. Current Analysis says laptops sales accounted for 53 per cent of the total personal computer market last month, up from 46 per cent during the same period last year.



Are the components in these two computers similar?

Laptops contain components that are similar to those in their desktop counterparts and perform the same functions but are miniaturised and optimised for mobile use and efficient power consumption. Laptops usually have liquid crystal displays and smaller SO-DIMM (Small Outline DIMM) chips for their RAM. In addition to a built-in keyboard, they may utilise a touchpad (also known as a trackpad) or a pointing stick for input, though an external mouse or keyboard can usually be attached.

Any computer - desktop or laptop - has the following basic components.

* Processor (the main engine of the computer)

* Memory (where the software 'brains' of the computer as well as data are stored - as long as the computer is powered ON)

* Mass Storage (where user files, application software, etc. are stored permanently - meaning, they are there regardless of whether the computer is ON or OFF)

* Removable storage (used to transfer files in and out of the computer on a need basis)

.Peripheral controller/adapter (that controls and provides all interfaces to the computer's peripheral devices including the monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, removable storage, USB ports, etc).

The difference really is in the way each of these components is designed and implemented. The constraints placed in the implementation of these components in a laptop are driven by the most desired characteristics, which are:

* It should be small - smaller the better.

* It should be light - lighter the better.

* It should be powered by a battery.

* The battery should last a long time. After all, who wants a laptop that would not run even for 5 minutes without needing to be plugged into a power outlet.

* It should not generate too much heat - you don't want to burn your lap, would you?

* It should allow the user to use floppy disks or CDs or other forms of 'removable' media so that files can be transferred in and out of the computer.

The above components are packed together in a laptop tighter than in a desktop, making laptops less rugged than desktops from a physical handling standpoint.
Surprisingly, most laptops available in the market these days offer just about all the above.

Can laptops be repaired and upgraded?

Components in a desktop computer are easier to upgrade than those in a laptop.

Until recently, laptop users were not able to upgrade any of the machine's components because it couldn't be opened - what you bought was what you bought. Some savvy users were able to add more RAM, but that was about it. This remains true today except for higher-end gaming laptops that let users upgrade the video card whenever faster ones become available.

Companies such as Alienware allow gamers to do it themselves, while Dell's XPS gaming laptops require a technician.
When it comes to repair, it normally costs more to fix a laptop than a desktop because, as previously mentioned, components are smaller and therefore tend to be more time-consuming. In fact, some repair shops will only work on desktop computers. That said, manufacturers usually offer similar warranties for laptops and desktops and will often handle the repairs themselves.


How much does a laptop cost and what are its brands?

Desktop computers are less expensive than laptop computers. The price difference is because a laptop's components are much smaller, usually more expensive to manufacture, and more time-consuming to build into the final product. Prices range from Rs 45,000 for entry-level ones to over Ts 1.5 lakh for snazzier versions.

Laptop brands: Acer (TravelMate and Aspire), Alienware, Apple Computer (iBook and Powerbook), ASUS, Averatec, Clevo, Compaq (EVO, Armada and Presario), Dell, ECS, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett Packard, Hypersonic, IBM, NEC, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba.
Difference between Centrino (Pentium M) and Pentium IV
I have been planning to replace my old desktop PC with a new one and now I have to decide whether to go for a desktop or notebook (laptop) computer. My first preference is laptop keeping in view the kind of mobility it offers but there are other factors that I have to take of such as speed and price. Notebooks are available starting from Rs.30,000 onwards but they don’t have best processor serving it.
In recent past Intel has come up with new processors especially for notebook users so it has become diffcult to decide what to go for. I have started looking on net for information which is essential for notebook buyers to know about latest processors. This is what I have found -
• Basically there are 2 kind of processors from Intel : Penitum 4 & Pentium M (which is a mobile processor).
• Pentium M processor + Intel 855 chipset+ Intel/Pro wireless network connection makes a Centrino. Remember CENTRINO is not just a processor but a combination of all three.
• The Pentium M was built from the ground up, it is a completely new design from Intel
• Centrino uses far less power than any previous Intel processor consumes, thats why its battery life is good on notebooks which uses Centrino.
• Centrino is available in 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7GHz speeds. It has 1Mb of on-die L2 cache.
• Frequency doesn’t matter so much, as long as the chip design includes big caches and highly accurate branch prediction. The Centrino processor has met or exceeded expectations here, making notebooks based on the Mobile Pentium 4 completely unappealing for almost all practical purposes. In tests, Centrino—which is actually based on a modified Pentium III core and Pentium 4-like bus—outperformed the higher-frequency, power-hogging Pentium 4 devices hands down.
Various Responses to “Difference between Centrino (Pentium M) and Pentium IV”
 Centrino is the way to go — no doubt about it
 Centrino is a standard that specifies the 3 components that you have down, the processor, the wireless card and the chipset.
 A Centrino (acctually all Pentium - M) processor(s) save power by doing a simple thing.
 When they run on battery, they reduce their clock speed, as a result compute lesser instructions per second which saves power.
 Also the M chip is designed for laptops, which means it has lesser heating. P4’s were designed for desktops and get hotter.
 The heat factor varies from laptop to laptop as it depends on various factors that are specific to the manufacturer. But the fact remains that the M chips are cooler than the P4’s. Hope that helps.
 I have a centrino notebook and I love it. The centrino processor (or combo as you have pointed out) definitely helps in longer battery life and capturing wifi signals.
 However desktops give better performance and are more stable (less problem prone).
 I also agree for going with centrino but then why most of the distributors suggest to go for Pentium 4 and you can better find it if you go for survey………….
 I buy notebooks for our field sales personnel. The Pentium M/Centrino, with its variable speed and lower heat output along with the smaller 14″ screen (compared to the 15.4″ w-i-d-e screen), give them the longer battery life critical to their jobs.
COMPANY PROFILE OF MAJOR LAPTOP COMPANIES

HP
About us
HP is a technology company that operates in more than 170 countries around the world. We explore how technology and services can help people and companies address their problems and challenges, and realize their possibilities, aspirations and dreams. We apply new thinking and ideas to create more simple, valuable and trusted experiences with technology, continuously improving the way our customers live and work.
Fast facts

 HP was incorporated in 1939.
 Corporate headquarters are in Palo Alto, Calif.
 Mark Hurd is president and CEO.
 HP is a Fortune 11 company, with $86 billion in revenue, generating $7 billion in organic growth for fiscal year 2005.

Technology leadership

HP's three business groups drive industry leadership in core technology areas:

 The Personal Systems Group: business and consumer PCs, mobile computing devices and workstations
 The Imaging and Printing Group: inkjet, LaserJet and commercial printing, printing supplies, digital photography and entertainment
 The Technology Solutions Group: business products including storage and servers, managed services and software
Growth

HP is focused on three technology shifts that have the power to transform our customers' lives and businesses.

 Next-generation data center
 Always on, always connected mobile computing
 Ubiquitous printing and imaging
Microsoft Accessibility — Technology for EveryoneHP has collaborated with Microsoft on many accessibility projects. The nationwide network of Microsoft Accessibility Resource Centers (MARC) is one of the latest developments. These centers provide accessibility consultation to businesses, schools, and individuals looking for empowering technology solutions. HP supports the centers by providing HP desktops running Windows Vista, the next generation Windows operating system from Microsoft
PCS
About PCS

PCS: A Worldwide Leader in Technology
PCS is an innovative, international technology company formed as a result of the acquisition by the PCS Group of the PCS Personal Computing Division.
As a global leader in the PC market, we develop, manufacture and market cutting-edge, reliable, high-quality PC products and value-added professional services that provide customers around the world with smarter ways to be productive and competitive.

We base our success on our customers achieving their goals: productivity in business and enhancement of personal life.

Our company

PCS executive headquarters are in Purchase, New York, USA with principal operations in Beijing, China, and Raleigh, North Carolina, USA and an enterprise sales organization worldwide. The company employs more than 19,000 people worldwide.

In 2003, PCS introduced a self-developed collaborative application technology, which heralds the important role Lenovo is going to play in the 3C era (computer, communications and consumer electronics). These and other market-leading personal computing products catapulted Legend to a leadership position in China for eight consecutive years with over 25% market share in 2004.
Our values

Lenovo and its employees are committed to four company values that are the foundation for all that we do:
Customer service: We are dedicated to the satisfaction and success of every customer.

Innovative and entrepreneurial spirit: Innovation that matters to our customers, and our company, created and delivered with speed and efficiency.
Accuracy and truth-seeking: We manage our business and make decisions based on carefully understood facts.
Trustworthiness and integrity:

In China, PCS commands more than one-third of the PC market, covering all segments. Its leading-edge are highly acclaimed for their user-friendly, tailor-made designs and customized solutions for various customer needs, including the Tianjiao and Fengxing consumer desktops and Yangtian and Kaitian enterprise desktops. Lenovo also has a broad and expanding product line encompassing mobile handsets, servers, peripherals and digital entertainment products for the Chinese market.

Allied with IBM to Offer a Total Solutions Portfolio

Lenovo and PCS have a strategic alliance designed to provide a best-in-class experience for enterprise customers. The companies have entered into significant, long-term agreements that give customers preferred access to PCS world-class customer service organization and global financing offerings, and that enable Lenovo to take advantage of IBM's powerful worldwide distribution and sales network. Lenovo's customers are able to count on the entire IBM team – including sales, services and financing – for access to IBM's legendary end-to-end IT solutions. As part of a five-year commitment, IBM will also provide Lenovo with warranty services and offer Lenovo customers leasing and financing arrangements. Through this long-term relationship, customers will receive the best products with the lowest total-cost-of-ownership.

Company history

1980s

1981 IBM PCD introduces its first personal computer, the IBM PC.
1984 IBM PCD introduces its first portable computer, the IBM Portable PC, weighing 30 pounds.
With an initial capital outlay of only RMB200,000, (US$25,000) Lenovo’s founding chairman Liu Chuanzhi, together with 10 like-minded colleagues, launches the New Technology Developer Inc. (the predecessor of the Legend Group) funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
1986 IBM PCD announces its first laptop computer, the PC Convertible, weighing 12 pounds.
1987 IBM PCD announces the Personal System/2 personal computer.
Legend successfully rolls out the Legend Chinese-character card.
1988 Legend’s Chinese-character card receives the highest National Science-Technology Progress Award in China.
Legend Hong Kong is established.
1989 Beijing Legend Computer Group Co. is established.

1990s
1990 The very first Legend PC is launched in the market. Legend changes its role from that of an agent for imported computer products into that of a producer and seller of its own branded computer products. Legend are ratified and accepted by the China Torch Program.
1992 IBM PCD introduces ThinkPad, the industry’s first notebook with a 10.4 inch color Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display and a TrackPoint (red ball) pointing device.
Legend pioneers the home PC concept and Legend 1 + 1 home enter the Chinese marketplace.
1993 Legend enters the Pentium era, producing China’s first "586" PC. Legend establishes 1+1 retail network.
1994 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first notebook with integrated CD-ROM, the ThinkPad 755CD.
Legend is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Legend PC business division is formally established.
1995 IBM PCD introduces the “butterfly” keyboard.
IBM PCD moves from Boca Raton, Florida, to Raleigh, North Carolina.
Legend introduces the first Legend-brand server.
1996 Legend becomes the market share leader in China for the first time.
Legend introduces the first Legend brand laptop.
1997 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first notebook equipped with a DVD-ROM, the ThinkPad 770.
Legend signs an Intellectual Property agreement with Microsoft, the most valuable deal ever made in China at the time.
Legend launches the first multi-function laser printer.
1998 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first ThinkLight, a small light that illuminates the keyboard in low-light work environments, such as onboard an airplane.
The millionth Legend PC comes off the production line. Intel Chairman Andy Grove attends the ceremony, and takes the PC for Intel’s museum collection.
Legend establishes the first Legend Shop.
1999 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first mini-notebook, weighing under three pounds, with standard ports and a keyboard that is 95 percent of full-size.
IBM PCD announces its exit from the retail business.
IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first PC with an embedded security chip.
Legend becomes the top PC vendor in the Asia-Pacific region and heads the Chinese national Top 100 Electronic Enterprises ranking.
Legend launches pioneering Internet PC, with its "one-touch-to-the-net" feature, which enables millions of Chinese PC users to easily access the Internet.

2000s

2000 IBM PCD ships its 10-millionth ThinkPad notebook PC.
Legend becomes a constituent stock of the Hang Seng Index - HK.
Legend ranked in top 10 of world's best managed PC venders.
2001 An IBM notebook with an embedded security chip becomes the industry’s first notebook to be certified by the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, an industry body setting data security standards.
Legend successfully spins off Digital China Co. Ltd., which is separately listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Legend appoints Yuanqing Yang President and CEO.
Legend first introduces "digital home" concept and launches accessories-enabling PC.
2002 IBM PCD introduces ImageUltra and Rapid Restore, the first automatic data recovery technologies of their kind.
IBM PCD announces desktop PC outsourcing pact with Sanmina-SCI.
Legend launches its first technological innovation convention, “Legend World 2002,” which opens up Legend’s “Technology Era”. Legend introduces its visionary concept for the future of technological development and applications, its Collaborating Applications project, as well as its strategies for implementing Collaborating Applications.
Legend’s supercomputer, the DeepComp 1800 makes its debut. It is China’s first computer with 1,000 GFLOP (floating point operations per second) and China’s fastest computer for civilian use, ranked 43rd in the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest computers.
The mobile handset joint venture announced, marking Legend's formal entry into the mobile handset business.
2003 IBM PCD introduces the industry’s first notebook with an extended battery life of up to 11 hours.
IBM PCD introduces its ThinkCentre desktop PC line.
IBM PCD introduces its Active Protection System, the industry’s first notebook with an airbag for hard drive and data protection in case the system is dropped.
IBM PCD ships its 20-millionth ThinkPad notebook PC.
Legend announces the birth of its new "Lenovo" logo to prepare for its expansion into the overseas market
Based on the collaborative application technology, Lenovo initiates IGRS Working Group, in cooperation with a few large companies and the Chinese Ministry of the Information Industry, to promote the formation of the industrial standard.
Lenovo launches a Tech RoadShow 2003 nationwide to promote Lenovo's innovation.
Lenovo successfully develops DeepComp 6800 in November 2003. It ranks 14th on the global list.
2004 IBM PCD introduces the ThinkCentre ultra small desktop PC, no larger than a box of corn flakes.
IBM PCD introduces the first notebook with an integrated fingerprint reader.
IBM PCD ships its 100-millionth PC (counting both desktop and notebook computers).
Lenovo becomes an Olympic worldwide partner. It is the first Chinese company to become a computer technology equipment partner of the IOC.
Lenovo decides to develop the rural market by launching the "Yuanmeng" PC series designed for township home users.
Lenovo and IBM announce an agreement by which Lenovo will acquire IBM’s Personal Computing Division, its global PC (desktop and notebook computer) business. The acquisition forms a top-tier (third-largest) global PC leader.
2005 Lenovo completes the acquisition of IBM's Personal Computing Division, making it a new international IT competitor and the third-largest personal computer company in the world.
Lenovo announces the closing of a US$350 million strategic investment by three leading private equity firms: Texas Pacific Group, General Atlantic LLC and Newbridge Capital LLC.
Lenovo establishes a new Innovation Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., to enable customers, business partners, solution providers and independent software vendors to collaborate on new personal computing solutions.
Lenovo introduces the industry's thinnest, lightest and most secure Tablet PC, the ThinkPad X41 Tablet.
Lenovo introduces the first widescreen ThinkPad with embedded wireless WAN, the ThinkPad Z60, available for the first time with a titanium cover.
Lenovo becomes the world's largest provider of biometric-enabled by selling its one-millionth PC with an integrated fingerprint reader.
William J. Amelio is appointed as CEO and President of Lenovo.
2006 Lenovo introduces the first dual-core ThinkPad notebook , improving productivity and extending battery life for up to 11 hours.
Lenovo technology flawlessly supports the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, supplying 5,000 desktop , 350 servers and 1,000 notebook computers. Lenovo also hosts seven Internet i.lounges for use by Olympic athletes and visitors.
The first Lenovo-branded products outside of China debut worldwide. Researchers, scientists and product design teams from around the world combine Lenovo's heritage in enterprise and consumer PC technology to design the Lenovo 3000 product line, which features new desktop and notebook models specifically designed to provide worry-free computing to the small business market segment.
PRODUCT

IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M Laptop
Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Professional - 20 GB Hard Drive - 256 MB RAM - DVD-ROM Drive - 14.1 in Screen - Battery Life: 3 Hrs - 4.9 lbs
Overall Product Rating:
Price Range: $600 to $1,900 at 2 stores

Details
You will love the reliable and affordable IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M laptop computer. The IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M features: 20 GB hard drive, 14.1” XGA display, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional operating system, DVD-ROM optical drive, 16-bit Sound Blaster compatible audio controller, and 56k modem. The IBM ThinkPad 236621U 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M laptop computer handles all of your personal and professional needs.


Reliable notebooks


















Company data is not just important. It's priceless. When viruses attack or systems fail, the cost in lost data and productivity can be immeasurable. Only Think brand PCs offer ThinkVantage™ Technologies such as the Active Protection System™ and its "airbag-like" feature that can help protect your hard drive from falls on select ThinkPad models. Or Rescue and Recovery™: Just press the blue ThinkVantage button to get back lost data when you have operating system failure. It's your virus recovery button.


Questions and answers

Who can I speak with in order to determine what kind of computer system I need?

When you call Lenovo Direct at 1-866-96-THINK (1-866-968-4465), your call will be routed to the representative most qualified to assist you.

How will my call be handled by Lenovo Direct?

When you call Lenovo Direct at 1-866-968-4465 (1-866-96-THINK), you will be prompted to select the option that identifies the subject of your inquiry, so that we can connect you to the representative that can assist you.

How can I get technical support?

Technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week either online and via phone.
For online support visit Lenovo Support

By phone, contact our service provider, the PCS PC Helpcenter at 1-800-772-2227. Please have your system's model number available so that your call can be directed to the most appropriate technical specialist. The model number is printed on your system near the system's serial number - here's an example: 2645-9ZU

I need a manual. How do I get a replacement?
If you no longer have the manual that was shipped with your product, you can get a replacement.

You can either get a replacement manual online or call 1-800-879-2755 (8:30am to 7:00pm EST, Monday - Friday)

Some personal computers have the manual pre-installed on the hard drive. If you prefer a printed copy, please contact our service provider, the PCS PC Helpcenter at 1-800-772-2227.

How do I order parts?

If you know the part number, and you are ready to buy
If you want to search for the part.
If you want to browse all the available upgrades, accessories and parts.

How do I file a complaint?

Lenovo Direct takes great care in all of its communication with customers. Should something occur during your communication with us, which you find unacceptable, every effort will be made to resolve the situation to your satisfaction. If, however, you still wish to file a formal complaint, simply call 1-866-428-4465 (1-866-42-THINK) and select the Customer Service option.



Gartner research shows that the annualized cost of a PC represents less than 20 percent of the annual total cost of ownership. ThinkVantage Technologies address the other 80% by helping improve productivity and efficiency as you deploy, connect, protect, support, and dispose of your company's PCs.


ThinkCentre™ systems.
The need to protect data stored and accessed through PCs has never been greater. By integrating select Lenovo PCs with ThinkVantage Technologies into your compliance programs, you have more tools to help you manage the risk of compromised data.


DELL
Company Overview

Dell is among the world's leading computer manufacturers that has transformed and diversified into variety of business segments over the years. Products range from Dell PowerEdge servers, Power Vault, Dell EMC storage systems as well as PowerConnect switches for corporate clients. For individuals and professional customers products range from Dell Precision workstations, OptiPlex desktops, Dimension desktops, Inspiron and Latitude notebooks. Apart from these core products, the company also offer products and services range including printers, projectors, Axim handhelds, and other accessories. More recently, the company has announced intentions to explore LCD television/computer monitors as well as digital music players.

Spanning over 20 years, the company has always been associated with designing, manufacturing and customizing products and services to satisfy a diversified range of customers including individual customers to corporate and retailing businesses. The company's philosophy to deal with customers one-on-one has become a management model for other companies. Having gained the market leadership position in computer products and services, Dell's team have always been careful in sustaining its marketing strategy of providing standard-based computing solutions (Official Website 2004).
Today Dell is the third largest computer manufacturer in the world. On January 2004 Dell reports net revenue approximately $41,444 millions and 46000 employees.
History

Michael Dell, the founder and chairman of Dell.
Michael Dell, while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin, founded the company as "PC's [sic] Limited" with just $1000, in his room at Dobie, an off campus dorm, in 1984 to sell IBM-compatible computers built from stock components. He founded the company on the principle that by selling personal computer systems directly to customers, PC's Limited could best understand their needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs.
Dell History
1984-Michael Dell founds Dell Computer Corporation
1985-Company introduces the first computer system of its own design; the Turbo, featuring Intel 8088 processor running at eight megahertz
1987-Dell is first computer systems company to offer next-day, on-site product service
-International expansion begins with opening of subsidiary in United Kingdom
1988-Dell conducts initial public offering of company stock, 3.5 million shares at $8.50 each
1990-Manufacturing center in Limerick, Ireland, opened to serve European, Middle Eastern and African markets
1991-Introduces its first notebook computer
1992-Dell included for first time among Fortune 500 roster of world's largest companies
1993-Dell joins ranks of the top-five computer system makers worldwide
-
-Subsidiaries in Australia and Japan are company's first entries into Asia-Pacific region
1995-$8.50 shares of Dell stock worth $100 on presplit basis
1996-Dell opens original Asia Pacific manufacturing center in Penang, Malaysia
-
-Customers begin buying Dell computers via Internet at www.dell.com
-Dell begins major push into network-server market
-Company added to Standard & Poor's 500 stock index
1997-Dell ships its 10-millionth computer system
-Per-share value of common stock reaches $1,000 on presplit basis
-Dell introduces its first workstation systems
-Dell launches its U.S. Consumer business
1998-Company expands manufacturing facilities in the Americas and Europe, and opens a production and customer center in Xiamen, China
-Dell introduces its PowerVault storage products
1999-Dell opens second major U.S. location in Nashville, Tenn.
-Dell opens manufacturing facility in Eldorado do Sul, Brazil, to serve Latin America
-Dell introduces "E-Support Direct from Dell" online technical support
2000-Company sales via Internet reach $50 million per day
-For the first time, Dell is No. 1 in worldwide workstation shipments
-Dell introduces PowerApp appliance servers
-Dell ships its one millionth PowerEdge server
-
2001-For the first time, Dell ranks No. 1 in global market share
-Dell is No. 1 in the United States for standard Intel architecture server shipments
-Dell introduces PowerConnect network switches
-
2002-Dell names its Austin Manufacturing Campus the Topfer Manufacturing Center
-Dell ships its 2 millionth port in the PowerConnect line of network switches
-U.S. consumers choose Dell as their No. 1 computer systems provider
-Dell ships its first "blade" server, enters the handheld market with the Axim X5, introduces a standards-based point-of-sale offering for retail customers and enters the projector market with the introduction of the 3100MP projector
-
2003-Dell introduces printers for businesses and consumers
-Dell launches Dell Recycling to enable customers to recycle or donate to charity computer equipment from any manufacturer
-The name change to Dell Inc. is official, reflecting the evolution of the company to a diverse supplier of technology products and services
-Dell enters consumer electronics, a natural extension of the company's existing product portfolio that provides customers with a single resource for consumer technology needs
2004-Kevin Rollins becomes Dell's next chief executive officer
-Dell announces third U.S. manufacturing facility in North Carolina
2005-Dell tops list of "America's Most Admired Companies" in Fortune Magazine
-Opens third major U.S. manufacturing location in Winston- Salem, North Carolina
2006-Dell ships more than 10 million systems in a single quarter (Q4, FY06) for the first time in its history

Products
A Dell Optiplex desktop computer.


A Dell Inspiron consumer laptop PC.
Dell uses several brand-names for its product ranges, including:
• OptiPlex for office desktop computer systems
• Dimension for consumer Desktop computer systems
• Latitude for commercially-focused laptops
• Inspiron for consumer laptops
• Precision for workstation systems and high-performance laptops
• PowerEdge for larger corporate servers
• PowerVault for direct-attach and some network-attached storage (NAS)
• Dell EMC for storage area networks
• XPS for enthusiast/high-performance systems
• Axim for PDAs utilizing Microsoft's Windows Mobile
• Dell Digital Jukebox (DJ) MP3 Players
• Dell monitors LCD/ plasma TVs and projectors for HDTV and monitor use
• Dell On Call - extended support services (mainly for the removal of spyware and of viruses)
On Dell's Windows machines the manufacturer bundles a large quantity of software. Some have accused Dell of shipping spyware, specifically Myway Search Assistant and claim that its technical support team have instructions not to support its de-installation. Although the Dell Support Forum provides instructions for removing this software,[4] they seem extremely complicated. One cannot uninstall the software using the Microsoft Windows "Add or Remove Programs" utility.Dell openly supported offering Apple Computer's new Intel version of its Mac OS X operating system, but to this point Apple has stated the OS will only run on Macintosh machines, and will not agree to licensing Mac OS X to Dell.
Business model
Dell sells all its products both to consumers and corporate customers, using a direct-sales model via the Internet and the telephone network. Dell also showcases its consumer-oriented products at kiosks in major shopping malls. Dell maintains a negative cash conversion cycle through use of this model. The Internet has significantly enhanced Dell’s business model, making it easier for customers to contact Dell directly. Other computer manufacturers, including Gateway and Compaq, have attempted to adapt this same business model, but due to timing and retail channel pressures, they have not achieved the same success as Dell.
Marketing
Dell advertisements have appeared in several types of media including television, the Internet, magazines, catalogs and in newspapers. Dell constantly lowers product prices at all times of the year, offering free bonus products (such as Dell printers) and free shipping to encourage more sales. Recently, Dell became the lowest-price major computer-manufacturer in the United States. To maintain its low prices, Dell continues to accept most of the purchases via the Internet and the telephone network, and to move its customer-care division to India.
Competition
Dell's major competitors include Apple, Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, Packard Bell, Sun Microsystems, Gateway/Emachines, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. Enthusiast market competition takes place with Alienware (now a Dell division), Falcon Northwest, Voodoo PC, WidowPC, and other manufacturers. In 2004, Dell had a 17.9% share of the worldwide personal-computer market, compared to HP with 15.8%. By leveraging its business model, Dell attempts to undercut competitors and offer consumers a more attractive choice of personal computers and other equipment. In August 2003, Dell lowered product prices by 22% in an attempt to generate more sales, however this disappointed shareholders, sending Dell shares down by 2% in late Wall-Street trading amid fears of a sector-wide slump.
Awards

Dell has been recognized by some of America's leading multicultural groups for our diversity efforts:
Balancing Liquidity, Profitability and Growth
Dell's high return to shareholders has been the result of a focused effort over time to balance growth with profitability and liquidity. Dell has consistently led its largest competitors in each of those categories.

Dell Financials

(in millions, except per-share data) FY'071 FY'06 Change


Revenue $14,216 $13,386 6%
Operating Income $949 $1,174 (19%)
Net Income $762 $934 (18%)
Earnings Per Share $0.33 $0.37 (11%)
Days supply in inventory 5 4
Annual Financial Highlights


(in millions, except per-share data) FY062 FY053 FY04 FY03 FY024


Net Revenue $55,908 $49,205 $41,444 $35,404 $31,168
Operating Income $4,789 $4,254 $3,544 $2,844 $2,271
Net Income $3,825 $3,323 $2,645 $2,122 $1,780
Earnings Per Share $1.56 $1.29 $1.01 $0.80 $0.65
Closing Stock Price $29.26 $41.06 $33.44 $23.86 $26.80
1 Results for the three months ended May 5, 2006 include stock-based compensation expenses of $77 million net of tax, or $0.03 per share, due to the implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 123 (revised 2004), Share-Based Payments, ("SFAS 123(R)"). Dell implemented SFAS 123(R) using the modified prospective method. Accordingly, net income prior to fiscal 2007 includes only compensation expense related to restricted stock awards, but does not include stock-based compensation expense for employee stock options or the purchase discount under Dell's employee stock purchase plan.

2 Results for the fiscal year ended Feb. 3, 2006 exclude charges aggregating $442 million ($338 million of other product charges and $104 million in selling, general and administrative expenses) related to the cost of servicing or replacing certain OptiPlex™ systems that include a vendor part that failed to perform to Dell's specifications, workforce realignment, product rationalizations, excess facilities, and a write-off of goodwill recognized in the third quarter. The related tax effects of these items was $104 million. Fiscal year 2006 also excludes an $85 million income tax benefit related to a revised estimate of taxes on the repatriation of earnings under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 recognized in the second quarter.

3 Results for the year ended January 28, 2005 exclude an income tax charge of $280 million related to the repatriation of earnings under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 recorded in the fourth quarter.

4 Full-year FY '02 income/earnings data exclude a $742 million pretax charge related to job reductions, consolidation of facilities and impairment of assets.



Growth Highlights


Highlights of Dell's Stock History


Date Event Per-Share Price Presplit Stock Price


June 22, 1988 Initial Public Offering $8.50 --
April 9, 1992 Three-for-Two Split 25.81 38.72
October 27, 1995 Two-for-One Split 45.00 135.00
December 6, 1996 Two-for-One Split 56.75 340.50
July 25, 1997 Two-for-One Split 81.50 978.00
March 6, 1998 Two-for-One Split 69.25 1,662.00
September 4, 1998 Two-for-One Split 54.75 2,628.00
March 5, 1999 Two-for-One Split 43.03 4,131.00
May 5, 2006 Close of Last Quarter 25.68 2,465.28



Marketing Environment

Dell's strategy is global. It realizes that being closer to the customers is essential in carrying out its marketing strategies as well as in enabling it to build customer base. First by establishing the Internet infrastructure for booking/orders related activities it has been able to increased its customer base from existing markets. Using the same infrastructure it has been able to carry out its marketing strategies in new offices as well. However, Dell differentiate in its marketing tactics in that it believes in establishing a brick and mortar market presence. This is why the company has established sales offices and manufacturing outlets across North America, Europe, Asia and South America. This way it has been able to gauge the local customers' needs as well as services desired (Official Website 2004).
SWOT Analysis

Strenths: Dell's dynamic organizational structure allows it to achieve diversified targets. By allowing the components to directly become integrated in the manufacturing process of Dell, it has been able to reduce middle channel costs. These components, such as OEMs, CMs, logistics, system integrators, repair and support companies, component suppliers, third party HW and SW suppliers and distributors have become each of the company's manufacturing processes so that ease of provision to the customers is possible. This reverse organizational process structure differ from other industry leaders.(Kraemer and Dedrick 2004)

Weaknesses: Within the strengths lies Dell's weaknesses. Much of its strategies have to rely on the capacity and capability of these manufacturing components. Continuous updates and process improvement is required so that they can keep up with Dell's pace of development.

Opportunities: Having established an integrative and virtual network, Dell has been able to achieve the high level of corporate outcome that challenged most of the industry leaders. The established value web corporate model have also allow Dell to have global wide access to customers and market. Reaching any niche market in any continent is therefore not a problem for Dell's marketers.

Threats: However, due to the integration of components in Dell's organization structure, Dell compete not only compete at the final product level but also at the suppliers level. Third party software and software for example have great competition for price and product categorization which could eventually affect Dell's position in the market.
Marketing Strategy
Product: Dell's unique approach to manufacturing separates the different processes so that Dell is not reliant on singular production or supplier's chain for equipment production. Though there is no segregation of the different products and services but nevertheless in separating the components enabled it to target the customers based on the regions in which the products are manufactured. By assingning each regionalized production center particular component for production not only have diversified the risk of concentration of labor and production costs but also depending on particular infrastructure.
Price: For the above reason Dell's product pricing reflect the affordability of the local consumers. For example basing plants in Xiamen, China Dell has been able to provide products and services at the local prices without iincurring additional costs to price. Price reasonability and the availability of support, after sales services and parts have alleviate Dell's position from others.

Place: For this reason, Dell has been able to affect the location strategy aspect of its marketing campaign. As Dell's products are always available at the nearest dealers customers develop trust for the "local Dell" thereby achieving the objective of gaining their trust in Dell products and services, and forming a large and diversified consumer base.
Promotion:
Dell in the past have not concentrated on extensive marketing campaigns but this revolutionarized in 1999 when Dell changed its tactics by engaging in extensive marketing campaigns. The "Be Direct" attitude has changed the way consumer view Dell as the local producers. They also tend to have exclusive trust in exploiting the company as evidence from the customer from UK who complaint against Dell's promotional campaign, that the company does not follow its promise. However, apart from the ad hoc mishap in its marketing campaign Dell has been successful in its promotions. Yet, it is time again to revise this campaign as many of its rival is begining to follow the same trend ("Dell Launches New Consumer Advertising Campaign" 1999).
Positioning and Target Market: What Dell needs to achieve now is to focus on positioning of its products. Earlier, Dell's consumers can be anyone and anywhere. The advantage of not categorizing customer is that it allows Dell to anticipate different kinds of consumers yet not targetting specific group of customers. In the recent years however, as Dell has grown, the customer base changed from individual professionals to corporate type. Therefore, the new positioning strategy should follow the new target market and produce accordingly. The target market feature must be changed accordingly so as to tailor products to these corporate needs.
Problems in Strategy
However, this does not mean that Dell ignore its initial consumer demographics. Instead it should clearly subdivide groups so that marketing campaigns should be followed accordingly. This way, it will not follow a single profile customer for marketing campaigns and promotions but rather segregate their features for effective marekting strategy implementation. One problem that is visible to the author in this regard is that it would need to re-evaluation of the current marketing campaign whereby the campaign addresses the consumer at large. By narrowing the scope of the current marketing strategy Dell would be able to achieve niche marketing goals.
Another problem with niche marketing in a pervasive company like Dell is that it tends to reverse some of the process of manufacturing or rather alter it. For example suppliers would have to be unique who can do mass customization at shorter production time frame as well as maintaining quality standards. Dell therefore has to focus on quality control as it gradually integrate this new marketing strategy.
ACER
About Acer

Acer ranks as the world's No. 4 branded PC vendor, designing easy, dependable IT solutions that empower people to reach their goals and enhance their life. Since spinning-off its manufacturing operation, Acer has focused on globally marketing its brand-name products: mobile and desktop PCs, servers and storage, LCD monitors and high-definition TVs, peripherals, and e-business solutions for business, government, education, and home users. Acer's unique Channel Business Model has been instrumental in the company's latest success. The model encourages partners and suppliers to collaborate in a winning formula of supply-chain management, allowing Acer to provide customers with fresh technologies, competitive pricing, and quality service. Established in 1976, Acer Inc. employs 5,600 people supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries. Revenues in 2005 reached US$9.7 billion.

Acer Group

The Acer Group comprises of several companies marketing a broad spectrum of branded IT products, e-business solutions and services. In addition it supplies multiple brands of IT products including components, software, and 3C products in Greater China.






Company Organization




Milestones

Phase 1 - 1976 - 1986: Commercialize microprocessor technology
In its first ten-year stage of development, Acer established a corporate culture based on the founders' firm belief in "the goodness of human nature." This belief was exemplified by the offering of stock to all employees. During this stage in Acer's history, the company significantly contributed to the popularization of computers in Taiwan
1976 - Acer is founded under the name Multitech, focusing on trade and product design.
1978 - Acer founds the Microprocessor Training Center, where 3,000 engineers are trained for Taiwan's information industry.
1979 - Acer designs Taiwan's first mass-produced computer for export.
1981 - Acer manufacturing operations are established in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park.
MicroProfessor-I debuts as Acer's first branded product.
1982 - MicroProfessor-II is unveiled as Taiwan's first 8-bit home computer.
1983 - Acer is the first company to promote PC/XT products in Taiwan.
1985 - AcerLand, Taiwan's first and largest franchised computer retail chain, is founded.
1986 - Acer beats IBM with 32-bit PCs.

Phase 2 - 1987 - 1995: Establish a leading brand and go global
In 1987, Multitech formally became known as Acer, marking the start of Acer's efforts toward creating a strong brand name. During this second ten-year stage of development, Acer grew extensively and expanded both strategically as well as geographically. The company grew to be ranked 8th largest PC brand in the world.
1987 - The Acer name is created.
1988 - Acer Inc. launches IPO.
1989 - TI-Acer DRAM joint venture with Texas Instruments is formed.
1991 - Acer introduces ChipUp technology - the world's first 386-to-486 single-chip CPU upgrade solution.
1992 - Acer creates the world's first 386SX-33 chipset.
Acer initiates its first corporate re-engineering.
Phase 3 - 1996 - 2000: Offer fresh technology for everyone, everywhere
During the company's 20th anniversary celebration, the third stage of development was launched, including basic goals for technological innovation and simplification of operations. Top priority was placed on delivering the freshest, most affordable technology for the benefit of consumers worldwide.
1996 - Sertek is listed on the Taiwan stock exchange.
1997 - Official groundbreaking ceremony is held for Aspire Park, Acer's multifunction high-tech intelligence park.
1998 - Acer is the official IT Sponsor of the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok, introducing the world's first PC-based management system for a major international sporting event.
1999 - Aspire Academy is set up in Aspire Park to help managers of Asian firms and MNCs with offices in Asia improve their organizational and leadership effectiveness.
2000 - Re-engineering for the future, Acer splits off its OEM business unit to create Wistron Corp., an independent design and IT manufacturing company.
Phase 4 - 2001 - beyond: Transform from manufacturing to services
In the 26 years since its inception, Acer has evolved from a manufacturing powerhouse to a globally recognized computer brand, marketing world-class IT products and services.
2001 - Acer adopts a new corporate identity to symbolize Acer's commitment to enhancing people's lives through technology.
2002 - The new Acer Aspire is launched, bringing fresh home-PC standards to the global PC arena.
The Acer Value Labs are inaugurated to enhance Acer's customer-centric focus, and integrate technologies that add value to customers' lives.
Launch of the TravelMate C100 Convertible Tablet PC, the first convertible Tablet PC available in the worldwide market.
2003 - The next-generation Empowering Technology platform is launched, integrating hardware, software and service to provide easy-to-use, dependable end-to-end technologies.
Acer launches the Ferrari 3000, the first notebook in the world to sport the patented Ferrari-red color.
2004 - Acer unveils the new Folio design for notebooks, featuring pure functional simplicity, smooth curves and subtle elegance.
Founder Stan Shih retires from the Acer Group.
Acer becomes the world's No. 5 brand for PCs and notebooks, demonstrating the highest year-on-year growth among the top five vendors.
2005 - J.T. Wang assumes the position of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Gianfranco Lanci steps into the role of President of Acer Inc.
Acer is voted Reader's Digest gold-medal Computer SuperBrand in Asia for the seventh consecutive year.


ACER INDIA
Acer ranks among the world's top five branded PC vendors, designing and marketing easy, dependable IT solutions that empower people to reach their goals and enhance their lives. In 2000, Acer spun-off its manufacturing operation to focus on globally marketing its brand-name products: desktop and mobile PCs, servers and storage, displays, peripherals, and e-business solutions for business, government, education, and home users. Established in 1976, Acer Inc. employs 5,600 people supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries. Revenues in 2004 reached US$7 billion.


Strategic Partners




WIPRO
About Wipro
Wipro Infotech is the IT Services, Solutions & Products division of the Rs. 81.7 billion Wipro Limited. For the quarter ended December 31, 2005, Wipro Infotech recorded Revenues of Rs.3992 Million, a growth of 17% year on year and Profit before Interest and Tax of Rs.376 Million a growth of 39% year on year.
With over two decades of experience, Wipro has stamped its presence on the Indian market and leads the Indian IT industry. Headquartered at Bangalore, our business spans India, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
By collaborating with Wipro, organizations garner the power of tried and tested frameworks, strong domain knowledge, a large pool of certified technology specialists and best of breed alliances. We bring to market tailor-made, industry specific solutions that help meet your business challenges while increasing operational efficiency.
Azim Premji, Chairman and Managing Director of Wipro is said to have been responsible for expanding and diversifying this company from an FMCG company which made Vanaspati Oil, soaps and other consumer products into a IT services company as it is today.
History
Wipro was set up in the backdrop of the small town of Amalner in Maharashtra in 1945. Primarily an oil factory, the chief products were Sunflower Vanaspati and 787 laundry soap (a by-product of the Vanaspati operations). The company was called Western India Vegetable Products Limited, with a modest presence in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
In the 1970s Wipro embarked on an ambitious phase of expansion and diversification.
It was in the early eighties that Wipro made its foray into the Infotech arena. An energetic, committed team of professional R & D and marketing managers came together in Bangalore in 1980. Due credit should be given that most of these R & D computer professionals and marketing managers were dragged enmass from Electronics Corporation of India Limited Hyderabad, who were pioneer in research and development of indigenous first computer hardware, system software, telecom applications etc. Indeed Wipro, HCL, Indchem, Hinditron all should be indebted to ECIL for providing such a high calibre R and D managers, when experienced infotech manpower was not available in our country. With this began the Wipro Infotech story. In a small lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the team developed the first Indian 8086 chip.
Wipro has transcended from being a service provider to being a consultant, guide and trusted partner.Today Wipro is world largest independent R&D Service Provider
Timeline

Wipro Limited was incorporated in 1945 and commenced its operations in 1946. Significant milestones are:
• 1945: Incorporation of Western India Vegetable Products Limited.
• 1947: An oil mill and hydrogenated cooking medium plant set up.
• 1966: Azim Premji takes over the leadership of Wipro at the age of 21.
• 1975: Wipro Fluid Power set up to manufacture hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders.
• 1977: Name of the company changed to Wipro Products Limited.
• 1980: Information technology services for domestic market started.
• 1981: Hardware company is launched.
• 1982: Name of the company changed to Wipro Limited.
• 1984: Software products subsidiary - Wipro Systems Ltd. - established.
• 1985: Toilet soaps manufacture begins.
• 1988: Wipro BioMed, a new business unit to market and service bio-analytical and diagnostic instruments, is launched.
• 1989: Joint venture with GE of US for medical systems, Wipro GE Medical Systems Ltd.
• 1990: Product software business discontinued; software services begin.
• 1992: Lighting business and finance arm is established.
• 1994: Merger of subsidiaries Wipro Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Systems Ltd. with Wipro Ltd.











• 1998: Relaunch of Wipro identity with Rainbow Flower and positioning statement, "Applying Thought".
• 1999: Software business reaches SEI certification.
• 1999: Wipro Net set up by restructuring Wipro Ltd.'s communication services business to address the Internet market.
• 2000: Listing of Wipro Ltd.'s ADRs on New York Stock Exchange.
• 2000: Six Sigma initiative begun.
• 2001: Wipro becomes world's first PCMM Level 5 company.
• 2002: Wipro becomes CMMi.
PRODUCTS
Specifications WLG 9100
Wipro recommends Windows® XP Professional for Business
Processor & Platform Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology
• Intel® Pentium M 533 MHz CPU upto 2.13Ghz
• Dothan Processor 1.5~2.0GHz , 400 FSB
• Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 LAN 3B Adapter IEEE 802.11b or
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG Adapter IEEE 802.11b+g
• Intel® 915GM Chipset
Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Professional or
Genuine Windows® XP Home

Chipset Intel® 915GM + ICH6-M
Main Memory • 64-bit Memory Bus, Supports DDR 333
• Two So-DIMM slots support up to 2048 MB
• 512KB FLASH BIOS; shadow RAM support
LCD Display 15-inch XGA (1024x768) TFT Display
Graphics • Intel® GMA 900,320Mhz ,3D/2D video
• Support Dual view, Clone
• Simultaneous LCD and CRT display at non-interface external CRT.
• Support TV-out
CRT Display Modes • VGA 640x480, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• SVGA 800x600, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• XGA 1024x768, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• SXGA 1280x1024, 256/64K/16.7M colors
• UXGA 1600x1200 256/32K/64K/16.7M colors
Hard Disk Drive • One 2.5” 9.5mm IDE HDD 4200rpm with ATA100 support
• Supported capacities of 30/40/60/80 GB
Floppy Disk Drive External USB FDD of 3.5", 1.44MB (optional)
Optical Disk Drive • Slim Combo Drive:24X CD-Write / 24X CD-Rewrite / 24X CD-ROM / 8X DVD-ROM
Modem Integrated 56K S/W MDC/Fax Modem V.92 / K56_flex Support Azalia MDC
LAN & WLAN • On board 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet controller
• Boot from LAN support
• Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 LAN 3B Adapter 802.11b or Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG, IEEE 802.11b+g
• Embedded dual band antenna for WLAN
Interface I/O Port • One RJ-11 jack for 56kbps Fax/ Modem
• One RJ-45 jack for Ethernet
• One DC-in jack for AC adapter
• One VGA port for external CRT
• One Mic in
• One Line in
• One Speaker / Headphone-out jack (SPDIF)
• One IEEE 1394
• Four USB 2.0 port
• One Parallel port
• One IR (SIR-115.2Kbps supported)
• One TV-out port
Audio • Intel® High Definition Audio Chip with 3D Effect and Full Duplex
• SoundBlaster Pro Compatible
• Build-in stereo speakers (1W)
• Built-in Microphone
Memory Card Reader • 4 in 1 Smart Media Reader
• Supports MMC, SD, Memory Stick , MS PRO flash cards
PC Card Slot • PCMCIA 2.1 compliant, One type II
• 32-bit PC Card Bus 1.0 architecture
Audio DJ Audio-DJ for play/pause, stop, forward, rewind
System Status LED • Power-on/Suspend
• Bat. Charging/full/low
• Storage device access
• Cap. Lock
• Scroll Lock
• Num Lock
• E-mail in box
• Wireless indicator
Keyboard • 19 mm full size 88key with 4 Instant launch Keys
• 2.5mm travel
Hot Keys on Keyboard • Instant launch Keys
• 4 buttons
• Power4 Gear , Email, Internet,
• Touchpad Lock
• Function Keys
• Fn+F1 suspend switch
• Fn+F2 Wireless switch
• Fn+F5 Brightness down
• Fn+F6 Brightness up
• Fn+F7 LCD on/off
• Fn+F8 LCD/CRT/TV-out switch display
• Fn+F10 Volume on/mute
• Fn+F11 Volume down
• Fn+F12 Volume up
On-screen-Display • Brightness
• Display selection LCD/Ext. Monitor/TV-out
• LCD on/off
• AC adapter plug in/ Battery in use
• Volume On/Off
• Volume Up/Down
• Power4 Gear indicator
• Fan fail warning with long ‘’beep’’ sound
Pointing Device • Built-in Synaptics touch pad
• 2 click buttons
• Internet scroll key with 4 ways
Power Management • Full feature ACPI power management, supports Stand-by, Suspend to Disk, and Suspend to RAM
• User Programmable Power management Key (Power4 Gear)
• MDP 2003 compatible
Battery Pack & Life • Li-Ion +14.8V,4400mAh battery pack
• Battery life up to 4 hrs (Mobile Mark 2002 in Windows XP) *
AC adapter • Output: 19V, 3.42A
• Input: 100—240V AC, 50/60Hz universal
Dimensions & Weight • 328 x 288 x 27-38mm (W x D x H, typical)
• 2.80Kg
Security • Pre-OS Authentication by programmable key code
• BIOS Booting User Password Protection
• HDD User Password Protection and Security Lock
• Kensington Lock hole provided
Certification • WLP / WHQL Certification
• Centrino Certification
• Energy star Certification
• DMI Certification
Accessories • Utility & Driver CD
• Power Cord & AC Adapter
• Stylish Leather bag with mini carry pouch
• Manual

Alliances
Partnering with the best... Wipro Infotech has forged strategic relationships with the some of the world's best technology companies to bring to you a comprehensive suite of IT products, solutions and services. When you come to Wipro you get to leverage these extended relationships and access some of the world's best technologies.
Wipro Infotech's list of alliance partners includes the who's who of the technology world. Read more about each of these alliances to find out how they can work for you.






























































MARKET ANALYSIS

Strategic Brand Management

Want a notebook?
The market for notebooks is growing in India.

 Notebooks that were till recently considered a “must-have” for the frequent flyer alone, have now become a strong force in the personal computing segment.

 Adoption of a mobile lifestyle is another added bonus for notebook consumers, what with wireless hot spots cropping up in coffee shops and malls and allowing users to plug into the Internet from anywhere.

 Not surprising then that notebooks are popping up everywhere — on TV news desks, in sitcoms, in movies and even in your friend’s lap.

 Taiwanese notebook makers estimate that the market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at 20 per cent each year. And they should know. After all they manufacture 70 per cent of notebooks or its components for major players like Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

 Now for the best part. Notebooks are predicted to get even more prominent in markets like India as hundreds of millions of old desktop PCs retire in the coming years. It’s hard to even imagine or calculate how many old, bulky machines will be replaced by sleek, sexy upstarts simply referred to as notebooks.

 The domestic notebook market took a positive leap in the first quarter of 2006 despite uncertainty surrounding changes in taxes and duties during the Budget. Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the notebook PC segment as a whole witnessed a massive growth of 177 per cent year-on-year in terms of unit shipments.

 According to International Data Corporation (India), the consumer market has started buying notebooks as second PCs.

 A press release issued by IDC categorically states, “The buyers are already familiar with desktops and are ready to migrate to the next level of technology. At the enterprise level, notebooks are increasingly being looked at as productivity tools, not meant for the designated few in the organisation’s hierarchy but for the larger workforce.”

 Most notebook vendors have consolidated their position with spruced up products and a mature marketing strategy to promote their brand.

 Leaders like Apple, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Samsung, Dell and LG have launched notebooks models with increased performance, more hard drive speed and capacity, processor speed and graphics capability.

 While it is popularly believed that Indians are price sensitive, this does not necessarily mean that we only buy products at a bargain. Notebooks, which are essentially costlier than laptops, are targeted at those who are top management officials or frequent fliers and a style statement in themselves.

 Pioneering the concept of high-end notebooks, Sony India launched its VAIO models that have been increasingly popular in India.

 Sony launched VAIO series at a price of over Rs 1 lakh and, as expected, caught the consumers’ fancy. The style elements that are integrated in the VAIO are combined with unique features. The company claims it brings out the world’s slimmest notebook PC.

 “Clear bright LCD, instant AV mode button and many more features will make VAIO a choice for new-age customers,” feels Kent Tanigaki, product head (IT), Sony India.

 The ThinkPad (erstwhile brand tag of IBM), also in the Sony VAIO category, has built up a huge fan following in India. In fact, notebooks gave Lenovo the much-needed platform to launch itself in the Indian market.

 Sanjeev Menon, general manager, Notebooks BU, Lenovo (India) details, “Customers are increasingly opting for advanced features in high-end products. Some aspects of these products have become very popular like biometric technology, lightweight, widescreen and security.”

 Lenovo outlines that its customers favour the lightweight, durable and scratch-resistant models that weigh less than three kilos and have a long battery life.

 Some give prime importance to connectivity and look for WLAN and limitless connectivity. Our suggestion: Pay attention to the hard drive, processor, RAM, connections, battery life, price and yes, do go in for a branded name.

 Not to be outdone, HP recently introduced five new series of notebook PCs, including the company’s thinnest and lightest notebook. Ravi Swaminathan, vice president (Personal Systems Group), HP (India) feels that technology is not simply about hardware.

 “It’s about enhancing the user experience by building innovations at every level of computing technology - right from designing to ease-of-use, security and reliability as well as maintenance and service,” he says. True.

 Vendors like Samsung and LG are closing in too. Samsung has strengthened its line-up by launching two new models in the Indian market.

 The notebooks feature Intel’s Napa platform with the latest built-in CPU Core processor Duo, i945 chipset, 802.11 ABG and Bluetooth 2.0. Competitively priced for the higher-end notebook market, Samsung promises to deliver dynamic performance and style.

 Apple MacBooks, considered to be the next generation machines are fast catching the fancy of Indian customers.

 There is no single brand in India that can bag the coveted title of the notebook leader. But clearly the Indian market is readying to grow leaps and bounds this year.
LG Launches PC, Notebook Range
LG Electronics introduced four models of wide-screen notebooks based on the Sonoma platform, tablet PCs and Mediacentre-based desktop PCs.
The company also cited IDC naming it as the leader in CRT and LCD monitors in Q2 2005 and H1 2005.

Among the products launched today is the LW 20, targeted at the performance and feature-conscious customers. According to the company, this is the first 12.1-inch notebook with two spindles, and has a hot-swappable optical drive bay. Other products included the Bluetooth-enabled LT 20 tablet PC, the Mediacentre-based XPC, 'super slim' LCD monitor and an external DVDRW enabled for Lightscribe technology.

The company is manufacturing cabinets for its PCs in India and will also begin manufacturing optical disk drives in the country. The XPC it launched today comes for Rs 24,990, Rs 36,990 and Rs 39,990. The notebooks cost upward of Rs 92,000 and are available in blue, ivory and silver colors.

R. Manikandan, GM-sales and marketing (IT), LGEIL, said, "These notebooks are true Sonoma with DDR2 and dual channel unlike notebooks from other vendors which come with DDR1."

"We are not content with the No. 3 position, which we gained in flat three quarters since we rolled out our PCs in 2004," he said. "The notebooks market will continue to grow at around 80 percent per year and we are looking to increase our market share of around 3 percent."

Manikandan said that it will continue to use its regional distribution model and will be adding new partners to commensurate unaddressed and untapped markets.
Zenith Outsells Wipro, Dell, Acer














In a recently released IDC-Dataquest Report on the Dataquest Top 20 IT companies in the country, Zenith emerged as the second largest PC manufacturer after HCL Infosystems.

Zenith Computers showed a higher market share than Wipro, Dell, and Acer. The market share of Zenith is shown to be at par with IBM/Lenovo, just after HP.

Zenith got a major boost in profitability after entering the Laptop market. In August 2004, Zenith launched 7 laptops with the 'Power of Seven'. These laptops were well accepted in the Indian mobility market and the sales of laptops according to the company increased 350% in 2 quarters.

The notebook market here has seen a growth exceeding 140% as compared to last year's 75% with sales touching 2.2 lakh units.

"FY 2004-05 can be called the year of innovation and new product launches for Zenith. Zenith's impressive performance was a result of introducing higher and better range products, and backing them with superior quality control and distribution", said the IDC-Dataquest Report on the company's performance.

HP's attempts to woo consumers back
Quick, think of HP and what comes to mind? Probably printers. But the Palo Alto, California, based company also sells a lot of personal computers. Now HP is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in getting this message out through its new worldwide marketing campaign, which will roll out on TV, in print, and a lot of it online. And HP wants to tell you how to make your personal computer just that – personal – whether by customizing its appearance or using your fingerprint to lock it up.
As HP likes to point out, it’s the top ranked seller of consumer notebooks worldwide, and second in global notebook PC sales, still, it’s not really seen as a PC company. To change this perception, the Silicon Valley company has come up with a new worldwide marketing campaign – it uses a folksy logo and the slogan 'The Computer is Personal Again', to highlight how users can connect with its products.
Enter the Toughbook
With the launch of its Toughbooks, Panasonic has entered a notebook space which is yet to be explored by other vendors. Atanu Kumar Das reports on the company’s strategy to market the range in India.
Panasonic became the latest entrant in the Indian notebook market when it launched its Toughbooks that are targeted at large enterprises as well as some niche verticals. It launched six models priced between Rs 1,70,000 and Rs 3,00,000. The company is in talks with two of the biggest telecom players in the country, and deals are expected in the next quarter. It is also in talks with NDTV and Zee; discussions with the latter are in the final stages. In the government sector, Panasonic is negotiating with the defence ministry and para-military forces (CISF, CRPF, BSF), but the deals are expected to close only in the JFM quarter.
The range
Model Price
CSW2 Rs 1.7 lakh
CSY2 Rs 2 lakh
CS18 Rs 2.3 lakh
CS29 Rs 2.75 lakh
CS73 Rs 3 lakh
CS51 NA

Even though the initial acquisition costs for ruggedised Toughbooks are high, the total cost of ownership is lower

So what makes the Toughbook rugged? It begins with the product philosophy. All Toughbooks are designed to handle extremes, unlike commercial laptops, which must be tweaked to add mettle. The rugged design begins with the proprietary magnesium alloy casing which is 20-times stronger than ABS plastic and five-times stronger than Titanium. The feature extends to the hard drive, which is shock-mounted in a metal casing with sponge and polymer compounds that insulate the disk from any shock even when the head is writing onto the drive. The LCD screen comes with internal dampeners. Even the connectors are flexible and can absorb shock. Another unusual feature is the fan-less design and lack of an air vent. All covers are sealed by specially developed synthetic resin to protect against water and dust. There is no fan since it would become a mechanical point of failure in case of drops or vibrations. Instead, Toughbooks are cooled through the body itself by creating a casing that breathes. .
Marketing strategy
In the first phase, Panasonic is targeting three cities, Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad. Third Wave is an Ahmedabad-based distributor and has been associated with Panasonic for the last nine years, distributing their scanners and faxes. The company will have 50 resellers in each city, and has planned for seven retail outlets in Delhi and five in Ahmedabad. “We are as yet undecided as to the number of retail outlets we will have in Mumbai because the business dynamics are quite different in that city. One thing is for sure—we will have more outlets in Mumbai than in Delhi,” Bhushan informs.
In the second phase, which kicks off in January, the company will target Bangalore and Hyderabad. “Since the products are priced at a premium we would be first targeting the metros, then as the response picks up we will go to more cities. The market for high-end laptops is growing at a steady pace. According to IDC, the government makes up 40 percent of the overall computing market. We also expect the government to play a major part in our overall sales,” Bhushan adds.
Shende also mentions that the Indian market is maturing, and that this is positive. The computing market is growing, and the most encouraging part is that the high-end market is gaining momentum in terms of value.
MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS

 Prices on a hike
Most MNC’s have hiked up PC prices after the recent hike in the price of microchips. A PC in India costs more than four times its counterpart in the West. Intel recently announced a possible drop in the price of microprocessors. This is expected to offset the hike in the price of microchips. MNC’s should have waited for Intel’s announcement before hiking PC prices. A hike, at a time when the PC market is going through a lean phase, is bound to discourage a lot of potential buyers. We can’t afford that since the PC penetration ratio is already minuscule.

 Services to products
As always, going through Express Computer has been a pleasure. The views expressed in your column ‘Services to Products’ by Naveen Kudroli of Delhi, which has also been shared by the president of Nasscom, Kiran Karnik, indicated that there is a huge untapped domestic market in India, particularly within the Government sector. However, according to Karnik, companies need to move up the value chain and should also offer quality products to customers.
Micro Technologies focuses on bringing out quality products for various day to day applications. Principally, these cover office desk systems, personnel management system, billing system, civic amenities management system, asset management information system and so on. Perhaps, Micro Technologies is among the few companies, which can today boast of an array of products numbering 50. Our latest product, the Micro IAS System (Micro Internet Access Security System), offers total security for Web-based transactions.

 Networked India
Companies like Reliance have been laying optic fibre cables across the length and breadth of the country. But the whole purpose of the exercise is lost if this is not made available to the common man at affordable rates. Availability of huge amounts of bandwidth doesn’t necessarily translate into utilisation of the same. The recent furore over the hike in satellite channel prices is a case in point. The home consumer is very price conscious and so will not be willing to pay the heavy price, even if it means faster Net accessibility.

 Going going gone!
This is with reference to the article ‘Reverse auctions help cut procurement costs’ (EC January 21, 2002). The article provided a detailed analysis of the whole process. Lack of proper knowledge about the system has been the main reason why many companies have been reluctant to adopt these new technologies. It would be helpful if you could also provide the contact details of the companies which provide such facilities.

ConnectCapital’s India fund corpus at $60-75 million
ConnectCapital is likely to announce closure of its India-specific fund soon. Market sources peg the corpus at anywhere between $60 to 75 million, with Singapore Technologies reportedly committing about $35 million to the fund. The firm is reportedly in the final stages of closing the fund and the Singapore Technologies investment. Names of the other investors could not be ascertained though Insight Capital is understood to have committed some money to the fund.


Notebooks fail to do the lap of honour
The laptop market is one which the MNCs have in their pockets with companies like Compaq, which has a 31.4 percent market share, followed by IBM with 27 percent market share leading the way. The Japanese IT giant Toshiba is the third largest laptop seller in India with 20.2 percent market share, followed by Dell with 11.8 percent share of the market. However, the fifth largest laptop seller has a mere 3.8 percent market share. The growth of laptop sales in India continues to be sluggish. For the third quarter of ‘01, the latest quarter for which IDC has released its report, around 9,956 laptops were sold.

Wipro, Infosys take diverse routes to the top
Wipro and Infosys may be vying for the top spot in the capital markets, but their business model and nature of revenue streams diverge more and more every quarter. Wipro Technologies, the software services arm of Wipro, derived 51 percent of its Global IT service revenues from outsourced R&D services for the last quarter ended December ‘01. For Infosys, the biggest revenue stream remains the banking, financial services and insurance segment (BFSI), which contributes 34.2 percent, compared to 36.6 percent in the same quarter last fiscal. wipro’s telecom and inter-networking practice contributed 19 percent, while the telecom and ISP practice contributed 17 percent. The embedded systems and Internet access device practice contributed 15 percent. Compared to this , Infosys’ Insurance sector contributed 15.7 percent of the total revenues while the banking and financial services contributed 18.5 percent of the total revenues. Wipro derives bulk of its revenues from retail and utilities compared to BFSI for Infosys.

Acer India introduces sub Rs 60,000 entry level notebooks
Leveraging its world leadership in Notebook Technology, Acer has launched a 'first time in India' sub Rs 60,000 MNC notebook at Rs 59,990. Acer's new TravelMate 212 TX mobile PC provides you with all you need to stay productive at home and at the office. The TravelMate 212 TX is an all-in-one 3 spindle mobile PC with FDD, HDD and CD ROM offering great performance and a full compliment of features at a competitive price.

MARKET GROWTH RATE

Next-generation mobility: Laptop market on the growth path

"The laptop market is expected to show an exponential growth in the years to come as it is growing 100 percent every quarter"

-Devita Saraf
Executive Director
Zenith Computers

There has never been such a good time for laptop buyers in India. In recent times, prices have dropped much faster than anticipated. Can you imagine a laptop at Rs 25,000? Yes, many players have launched low-priced laptops and prices are likely to drop further. India is fast becoming a large laptop market in the Asia-Pacific region with sales numbers expected to cross approximately 3,00,000 units in 2005-06, according to Frost & Sullivan.

"Buyers have started considering notebooks as an alternative to a desktop PC mainly due to the bridging of the price gap between entry-level laptops and desktops"

-S Rajendran
GM, Sales & Marketing
Mobile & Display Products Group
Acer India

Devita Saraf, Executive Director, Zenith Computers, says that in 2005 the notebook segment grossed sales of 80,000 units, recording 123 percent year-on-year growth and 137 percent sequential growth. Factors contributing to this explosive growth are new technology features, enhanced performance, product durability and post-sales services.

Zenith registered a volume growth of 350 percent in 2004-05 in the laptop segment. “The laptop market is expected to show an exponential growth in the years to come. Laptops are growing by 100 percent every quarter,” says Saraf.

S Rajendran, GM, Sales & Marketing, Mobile and Display Products Group, Acer India, believes that buyers have started considering notebooks as a convenient alternative to a desktop PC mainly due to the bridging of the price difference between an entry-level laptop and a desktop. As per IDC, the Indian notebook market for the calendar year 2004 was 1,90,850 units. In the first three quarters of 2005, the same has grown to 3,21,476 units. Acer’s sales have grown from 15,068 units in the calendar year 2004 to 48,405 units in the first three quarters of 2005.

The fact that India has a huge potential for laptops can be gauged from the entry of NEC in the Indian market. During his visit to India in October 2005, Wu Tengguo, MD, South and Southeast Asia Sales, NEC Computers Asia Pacific remarked, “We want to be among the top five PC companies in India. By 2008-09 we intend to have 3 percent of the desktop and 6 percent of the Indian notebook market.”


Where is the mobility market headed?

• Performance improvement: Dual-core DTs and notebooks are expected to be more prevalent; there will be more momentum for PC growth, and even more for notebooks.
• Portability: As notebooks start delivering desktop advantages, executives will move towards the lighter alternative. The notebook’s mobility feature also allows workers to improve productivity and further lower the company’s TCO within an acceptable range.
• Wireless technology: The Indian laptop market looks poised to grow exponentially due to the increasing demand from mobile computing in a fast growing economy. Next generation Wi-Fi will provide faster speed, and wider bandwidth and range to boost wireless access.
• NAPA: With the introduction of NAPA in notebooks, corporate customers can take advantage of the enhanced performance of dual-core technology when running multi-threaded applications. Consumers can play 3D games while concurrently performing tasks such as streaming media or security scans.

Trends

"With Wi-Fi on handsets, there is bound to be demand for smart handheld devices that are used in department stores, hospitals, shopping complexes and other business sectors"

-Ish Bawa
Marcom Manager
BenQ

Laptops are also gaining acceptance as their portability, and more importantly performance levels, are matching those of a desktop PC. Many customers are switching from desktops to notebooks due to attractive price points. The user is demanding better performance, low price and lightweight machines. The key verticals driving the adoption are education, BFSI and SMBs.

“We expect the broadband, wireless and gaming segments to drive the demand for mobility products. We also see many customers switching from desktops to notebooks due to a better price proposition and the inherent advantages of mobility products. Organisations will be looking at notebooks as a replacement when their existing PC platform environment reaches the end of its lifecycle. We also see quite a few educational institutions and corporates adopting laptops with wireless in a big way,” says Garde.

Kalpak Bhatt, Product Manager, Gigabyte Technology India, believes that the trend is towards multimedia and mobility. “Multimedia is an inherent part of laptops. For example, a DVD-CDRW Combo drive is the most common feature of a laptop now. As far as market reach is concerned, it is essential to be present all across the country as well as be available globally. We have succeeded in selling our laptops through the Web. Retailing & e-tailing is tomorrow’s future.”

Ish Bawa, Marcom Manager, BenQ says, “Education and BFSI will drive the notebook market’s growth. SMBs and possibly the SOHO segment will also contribute.” In terms of technology, notebooks will not be a laggard to desktops, and the majority of office tasks can be completed, though some high-end design or data intensive work may still be done on the desktop platform.

"Vendors are expanding the market by offering consumers more choice in products, and encouraging potential desktop and TV consumers to go in for notebooks"

-Rajendra Kumar
Executive Vice-president
HCL Infosystems


Budget notebooks in demand

The earlier hindrance to the growth of the laptop market was price. However, with prices coming down that seems to be a non-issue. Besides, Bhatt feels that laptops are also feature rich. For instance, Gigabyte offers a fully-loaded laptop at the entry level. It not only comes with basics like 256 MB DDR RAM, 40 GB HDD, combo drive, 15” TFT LCD, LAN connectivity, modem, USB and PCMCIA, but also WLAN card, IEEE port, card reader slot, TV out and a parallel port on Intel Cel-M CPU & 915 GM chipset. The company is soon coming out with a cost-effective laptop in 14.1” widescreen varieties called the Chocolate Cookie laptop.

NEC has also launched their p8100 and e3100 models in this market segment. The entry-level segment is expected to account for 70 percent of the laptops being procured this year. Nevertheless, this does not discount growth in the middle and higher-end notebook categories. In fact, the Rs 70,000 to Rs 100,000 band still continues to be among the most popular segments.

Buyers have started considering notebooks as a convenient alternative to a desktop PC. Says Rajendran, “Though our entry-level notebooks have been widely accepted in the market and have increased a hundred-fold in the last year, it is still the Rs 70,000-Rs 80,000 category that accounted for a big share of the market in 2004-2005.”

Demand from educational institutions, specifically management institutes, colleges and the SMB segment is growing. Bigger corporates are equipping their mobile executives with entry-level laptops which have full features at an aggressive price.

SMBs: the emerging segment

Apart from large enterprises, SMBs are also contributing to a significant portion of shipments, according to IDC. The SMB community has started looking at notebooks as a mobile productivity tool.

Saraf says that the consumption in small enterprises grew by 118 percent, accounting for 17 percent of the total notebook sales in the business segment. On the other hand, medium-sized enterprises grew by 136 percent, accounting for 21 percent.
According to Bhatt, SMBs buy more of entry-level laptops today. The penetration of budget laptops in the SMB segment has started. In terms of percentage, SMBs today would have 60-70 percent of budget laptops. Currently though, desktop penetration is definitely stronger in the SMB segment and will probably remain so for at least 3-4 years as the number of SMBs is large and growing.

Handheld devices gaining popularity

Mobility does not just mean laptops. Today, executives prefer something small, light and easy to carry. Hence, the demand for PDAs, mobile phones and flash drives is increasing faster than ever before. Though still a small market, it is certainly growing.

Rajat Sharma, Industry Analyst, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan India says, “The handheld devices market has a low base. It is a logical extension to the notebooks market and will only start witnessing growth after the notebook market gains more traction. The handheld market is in a nascent stage and is growing at the rate of 25 percent a year. The verticals that contribute to this market traditionally have been telecom, IT, insurance, healthcare and manufacturing.”

Bhatt sees a huge potential in the smart phone market. “Smart phones will eat into laptops and no-frills mobiles to an extent. They will take away a chunk of the PDA market. The demand for such products is still in early stages but I won’t be surprised if it increases rapidly. These markets will peak sometime in Q3 or Q4 of 2006.”

Nokia, the largest mobile manufacturer, is tracking the developments in this sector. Its Enterprise Solutions arm is helping businesses and institutions worldwide improve their performance through extended mobility. Two years into its operation, this particular wing is worth a billion dollars.

With its product offerings—9300i, E60, E61, E70 and 6708—Nokia seeks to meet all the needs of the corporate segment. For instance, the Nokia 9300i smart phone is a compact business device with a full keyboard, 65,536-colour screen, and incorporates WLAN connectivity for faster wireless access to corporate information. The 9300i supports a broad range of enterprise e-mail solutions and has an attachment viewer that makes it the perfect combination of design and functions to meet the growing demands of mobile professionals.

G K Chakrapani, Country General Manager, Nokia Enterprise Solutions says, “Business mobility is catching on in India, and mobile professionals want efficiencies in time and cost. We are looking at how we can be of help to enterprises in achieving mobility and meeting their goals. How can enterprises look at extending certain tasks beyond the office domain? It is about using a device to access information that is in the corporate network, and do so in a fast, secure, convenient and simple manner.”

Gigabyte launched a smart phone that has features such as built-in TV (you can only watch free-to-air channels), card reader, Bluetooth and WLAN apart from the normal features like camera and USB connectivity. This phone runs on the Microsoft Mobile 5.0 version OS designed for smart PDAs.

On the applications front, BenQ has entire office suites now available on these devices; there are seamless messaging, calendar and browsing applications. The mobile phone and the PDA have converged into a single handheld computing-cum-communication device. Also, with e-mail-enabled handhelds, one can almost take the office anywhere.

Growth drivers

• The market for budget laptops will continue to grow at a fast pace as new first-time customers will buy laptops instead of desktops.
• Enterprises will also start equipping their sales force and other lower-management cadres with laptops.
• On the technology front, wireless WANs will slowly start becoming a standard feature of deployments.
• Blue-collar deployments of mobile data solutions is a new trend this year. IT has to move to the field, and rugged mobile computers will start to be deployed for blue collar applications.

Security concerns

While the demand for mobile solutions is growing, the need for security is also rising.

An increasing number of executives are storing company data on mobile devices such as smartphones, PDAs, laptops and USB drives, and with Bluetooth-enabled devices entering the mainstream, IT departments are confronted with security issues. Vendors too are doing their bit to ensure that such issues do not affect the overall market.
Most Acer notebooks are equipped with Acer Empowering Technology functions such as Acer eDataSecurity Management which makes use of passwords and advanced encryption (up to 256-bit) algorithms to protect files from being accessed by unauthorised users. It is integrated with Windows Explorer as a shell extension for quick and easy data encryption/decryption, and also supports on-the-fly file encryption for MSN Messenger and Microsoft Outlook.

As far as software security is concerned, Gigabyte says that they provide over 90 percent of their laptops with Linux OS, and these open source OSs are generally safer when compared to other laptops.
Dell takes third-party support to resolve security solutions from hardware encryption to tracking data. There are a couple of ways to track data such as installing GPS module in the products themselves; another way is to put codes in either hard drives or BIOS which will send out a signal while connected to the Internet or utilise 3G technology.

PRICING STRATEGY

The Falling Costs of Mobile Computing
Wireless connectivity has altered the business computing landscape forever. IT managers confronted with the demand for more mobile computing need to address issues as diverse as costs, security, resource allocation, and training. The technical staff will require new skills and knowledge to handle the unique requirements of mobile devices and their applications. Undoubtedly, changes in the network infrastructure will be necessary in order to respond to the capabilities of the next generation of mobile computers.
The most popular model for mobile computing today involves the integration of laptop (or, more accurately, notebook) computers with handheld devices. The laptop, however, is the primary component that IT organizations must deal with. Handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones are secondary devices to the laptop, and although they are highly popular devices, they will not play the central role in the mobile computing model over the next five years.
Market Changes Will Lower Prices





Computer Economics forecasts an increase in the ratio of laptops to desktops over the next two years, as shown in Figure 1. Laptops will outnumber desktops in most organizations by 2007, reaching 60% of the total personal computers in use in business computing. These conclusions are supported by most computer vendors who are gearing up to manufacture significantly more laptop systems. For example, the Lenovo Group, which bought out IBM's PC division, expects that laptop shipments will exceed desktops by 2008.
Recognition of the marketing opportunity represented by mobile computing has all of the major personal computer vendors preparing new strategies to gain a competitive advantage. Perhaps the most interesting battle will be between Lenovo and Dell.
BRAND STRATEGY & ROLE OF MEDIA

Want a notebook?

The market for notebooks is growing in India.

Notebooks that were till recently considered a “must-have” for the frequent flyer alone, have now become a strong force in the personal computing segment.

Adoption of a mobile lifestyle is another added bonus for notebook consumers, what with wireless hot spots cropping up in coffee shops and malls and allowing users to plug into the Internet from anywhere.

Not surprising then that notebooks are popping up everywhere — on TV news desks, in sitcoms, in movies and even in your friend’s lap.

Taiwanese notebook makers estimate that the market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at 20 per cent each year. And they should know. After all they manufacture 70 per cent of notebooks or its components for major players like Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Now for the best part. Notebooks are predicted to get even more prominent in markets like India as hundreds of millions of old desktop PCs retire in the coming years. It’s hard to even imagine or calculate how many old, bulky machines will be replaced by sleek, sexy upstarts simply referred to as notebooks.
The domestic notebook market took a positive leap in the first quarter of 2006 despite uncertainty surrounding changes in taxes and duties during the Budget. Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the notebook PC segment as a whole witnessed a massive growth of 177 per cent year-on-year in terms of unit shipments.

According to International Data Corporation (India), the consumer market has started buying notebooks as second PCs.

A press release issued by IDC categorically states, “The buyers are already familiar with desktops and are ready to migrate to the next level of technology. At the enterprise level, notebooks are increasingly being looked at as productivity tools, not meant for the designated few in the organisation’s hierarchy but for the larger workforce.”

Most notebook vendors have consolidated their position with spruced up products and a mature marketing strategy to promote their brand.

Leaders like Apple, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Samsung, Dell and LG have launched notebooks models with increased performance, more hard drive speed and capacity, processor speed and graphics capability.

While it is popularly believed that Indians are price sensitive, this does not necessarily mean that we only buy products at a bargain. Notebooks, which are essentially costlier than laptops, are targeted at those who are top management officials or frequent fliers and a style statement in themselves.

Pioneering the concept of high-end notebooks, Sony India launched its VAIO models that have been increasingly popular in India.

Sony launched VAIO series at a price of over Rs 1 lakh and, as expected, caught the consumers’ fancy. The style elements that are integrated in the VAIO are combined with unique features. The company claims it brings out the world’s slimmest notebook PC.

“Clear bright LCD, instant AV mode button and many more features will make VAIO a choice for new-age customers,” feels Kent Tanigaki, product head (IT), Sony India.

The ThinkPad (erstwhile brand tag of IBM), also in the Sony VAIO category, has built up a huge fan following in India. In fact, notebooks gave Lenovo the much-needed platform to launch itself in the Indian market.

Sa Lenovo outlines that its customers favour the lightweight, durable and scratch-resistant models that weigh less than three kilos and have a long battery life.

Some give prime importance to connectivity and look for WLAN and limitless connectivity. Our suggestion: Pay attention to the hard drive, processor, RAM, connections, battery life, price and yes, do go in for a branded name.

Not to be outdone, HP recently introduced five new series of notebook PCs, including the company’s thinnest and lightest notebook. Ravi Swaminathan, vice president (Personal Systems Group), HP (India) feels that technology is not simply about hardware.

“It’s about enhancing the user experience by building innovations at every level of computing technology — right from designing to ease-of-use, security and reliability as well as maintenance and service,” he says. True.

Vendors like Samsung and LG are closing in too. Samsung has strengthened its line-up by launching two new models in the Indian market.

The notebooks feature Intel’s Napa platform with the latest built-in CPU Core processor Duo, i945 chipset, 802.11 ABG and Bluetooth 2.0. Competitively priced for the higher-end notebook market, Samsung promises to deliver dynamic performance and style.

Apple MacBooks, considered to be the next generation machines are fast catching the fancy of Indian customers.

There is no single brand in India that can bag the coveted title of the notebook leader. But clearly the Indian market is readying to grow leaps and bounds this year.







India's latest craze: Laptops
Notebooks that were till recently considered a "must-have" for the frequent flyer alone, have now become a strong force in the personal computing segment.
Adoption of a mobile lifestyle is another added bonus for notebook consumers, what with wireless hot spots cropping up in coffee shops and malls and allowing users to plug into the Internet from anywhere.
Not surprising then that notebooks are popping up everywhere - on TV news desks, in sitcoms, in movies and even in your friend's lap.
Taiwanese notebook makers estimate that the market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at 20 per cent each year. And they should know. After all they manufacture 70 per cent of notebooks or its components for major players like Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
Now for the best part. Notebooks are predicted to get even more prominent in markets like India as hundreds of millions of old desktop PCs retire in the coming years. It's hard to even imagine or calculate how many old, bulky machines will be replaced by sleek, sexy upstarts simply referred to as notebooks.
The domestic notebook market took a positive leap in the first quarter of 2006 despite uncertainty surrounding changes in taxes and duties during the Budget. Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the notebook PC segment as a whole witnessed a massive growth of 177 per cent year-on-year in terms of unit shipments.
According to International Data Corporation (India), the consumer market has started buying notebooks as second PCs.
Sony launched VAIO series at a price of over Rs 100,000 and, as expected, caught the consumers' fancy. The style elements that are integrated in the VAIO are combined with unique features. The company claims it brings out the world's slimmest notebook PC.
"Clear bright LCD, instant AV mode button and many more features will make VAIO a choice for new-age customers," feels Kent Tanigaki, product head (IT), Sony India.
The ThinkPad (erstwhile brand tag of IBM), also in the Sony VAIO category, has built up a huge fan following in India. In fact, notebooks gave Lenovo the much-needed platform to launch itself in the Indian market.
."
Lenovo outlines that its customers favour the lightweight, durable and scratch-resistant models that weigh less than three kilos and have a long battery life.
Some give prime importance to connectivity and look for WLAN and limitless connectivity. Our suggestion: Pay attention to the hard drive, processor, RAM, connections, battery life, price and yes, do go in for a branded name.
Not to be outdone, HP recently introduced five new series of notebook PCs, including the company's thinnest and lightest notebook. Ravi Swaminathan, vice president (personal systems group), HP (India) feels that technology is not simply about hardware.
Apple MacBooks, considered to be the next generation machines are fast catching the fancy of Indian customers.
There is no single brand in India that can bag the coveted title of the notebook leader. But clearly the Indian market is readying to grow leaps and bounds this year.
Zenith and the art of contrarian pricing
Mumbai: The Rs300-crore Zenith Computers Ltd, the largest laptop manufacturer today has reasons to be pleased; its laptop strategy, called the 'Power of Seven', which was launched in 2004 has helped push up the sales of its laptops. Zenith's strategy was to move up the value chain focusing on the high-end laptops segment, unlike the volume strategy of those who were trying to develop the sub-10,000 PC.
The company opted to cater to consumers who preferred a fully functional PC or laptop depending on their application requirement compared to a low-value, low-cost PC. Market analysts like IDC India two were sceptical whether the consumers would really go to the market to buy low-priced PCs.
Zenith's strategy to move up to the higher end of the spectrum proved successful. Since laptops are a high margin product, increase in laptop sales have significantly added to the company's bottom line.
" Zenith now plans to increase its retail stores from 450 to 1000 in 240 cities across the country by end 2006.
HCL FORAYS INTO THE MOBILE COMPUTING MARKET

HCL the leader in Desktops PCs unveils India's first segment specific range of notebooks brand - 'HCL Leaptops'
HCL announces manufacturing of Laptops in India .
New Delhi, February 23, 2006 -- HCL Infosystems, India's premier information enabling company & market leader in desktop computers, today announced its foray into the mobile computing space with the launch of India's first segment specific range of notebooks brand - 'HCL Leaptops'- more than just laptops.
Exhilarated over the company's foray into the mobile computing market, Mr. George Paul, Executive Vice President, HCL Infosystems Ltd. said, "Today, HCL has emerged as a brand of choice, among enterprise & home users, in desktop computers. We have led the desktop PC segment ahead of multinational companies for the fifth year consecutively."
"The Notebook market in India is poised for growth and our strategy to foray into the mobile computing market is dictated by the voice of our customers demanding mobility, making it easier for them to work and live in new and flexible ways." added Mr. Paul.
"We aim to repeat the same success as in desktop PC and hope to receive even better response from customers to our segment specific range of HCL notebook offerings" said Mr. Paul "
HCL Notebooks come with award winning HCL's Best Assured Services that give customers several convenient options of service anywhere in India. These options include real time tele-support for prompt resolution of soft issues, qualified technical online support through instant messaging and email, built-in online access to 'easy to use', self - help guides / user manuals & with 'return to bench' offering to 'HCL Service Points' manned by skilled, well-trained support engineers for home & SOHO users.
For Enterprise users, onsite support is available at 300 locations across the country with the facility of stand by unit support at metros for the traveling professional.
HCL Leaptops come with a comprehensive insurance coverage from theft, accidental damage, breakage and liquid spill, ensuring complete peace of mind to its users.
HCL, a clear leader in the enterprise, government and consumer space is all poised to meet the growing mobile computing needs of its customers. Leveraging its inherent strengths of pan-India sales & service infrastructure, HCL's launch of solution centric offerings addresses the application requirement of different segments of customers.

Starting from Rs. 27,490/-, HCL is offering a very wide range of Leaptops including multimedia, ruggedised, ultra thin and light notebooks with Intel & AMD platforms. HCL has pioneered the concept of financing consumer PCs through various tie-ups and has now made its notebooks available on easy to avail finance options with EMI starting at Rs 699/- per month.
The new range of HCL Notebooks are designed as per the requirements of various target groups such as Architects, Engineers, Doctors, Info-kiosks (for Jewelers, Opticians, Banks), Women, Defence etc.
The notebook market has already witnessed exponential growth for the last two years and is estimated to grow at more than 50% year on year.
SEGMENTATION & POSITIONING STRATEGY

Segmentation Versus Personas: Where Should B2B Marketers Start?

Most B2B firms segment prospects and customers by basic criteria like company basic criteria like company size, industry, and geography. Unfortunately, with this approach, it is difficult to precisely align marketing messages with buyer pain points or purchase cycle stages. B2B marketers improve their customer knowledge when they base segmentation on prospect roles, needs, or preferences, rather than sales-centric categories. By applying customer-centric segmentation criteria and using the principles of Scenario Design, B2B marketers can develop communication strategies that resonate with the specific business challenges and life- cycle issues that customers face.

The Next-Generation Wireless LAN

Wireless LAN technology is gaining broad acceptance and being adopted worldwide in organizations that clamor for the competitive advantage of an increasingly mobile and highly productive workforce.

The Arrival of Wireless

Wireless technology for computer users is nothing new. The first connections were established two decades ago. Adoption, though, has proceeded very slowly, mostly limited to a few specialized vertical markets, such as warehousing, education, and retail.
Implementation has been slow for three reasons. First, the original wireless data rates were too slow to serve mainstream users on a shared LAN. Although throughput did gradually increase, network speeds still drastically lagged those of wired LANs. Second, proprietary, nonstandard solutions dominated the marketplace, providing little interoperability among devices, or the peace of mind for users that comes from having multiple vendor options. Third, these low-speed proprietary solutions were very expensive compared to wired solutions.


Perhaps most importantly, many types of organizations today see tremendous value by adding wireless onto the corporate LAN. For years, laptop and notebook computers have promised anytime, anywhere computing. But, with access to the LAN and the Internet becoming such an integral part of business, a wireless connection is needed to make true the promise of anytime, anywhere computing. Wireless devices enable users to be constantly connected from virtually anywhere: a desk, a conference room, the coffee shop, or another building on a corporate or academic campus. This ability provides users with maximum flexibility, productivity, and efficiency, while dramatically boosting collaboration and cooperation with colleagues, business partners, and customers. In addition, wireless can bring LAN access to locations where laying cable is difficult or expensive.

WOW ; Web Technologies, News and Trends
Intel plans to unveil next week a prototype consumer portable computer that blurs the line between desktops and notebooks by shedding the traditional clamshell laptop design.



The prototype, which acts like an all-in-one desktop, will be one of three models unveiled at Intel's annual spring developer conference in San Francisco. Two concept business notebooks will also be unveiled. Collectively, the machines are known as Florence.
The machine has space for a telephone handset for placing voice over Internet Protocol phone calls and a remote for controlling multimedia functions. Built-in 802.11 wireless networking will connect users to a home network. It also has a fingerprint sensor and a smart card reader for extra security and authentication of premium content, Trainor said.

Not in showrooms yet While Intel will show off the Florence prototypes next week, it doesn't expect them to become available to consumers anytime soon, Trainor said.

"These are, in theory, our 2005 concept vehicles," he said. "The only reason to throw that word 'theory' in there is because I think this particular home design is going to be so interesting that people will take it and do it in 2004."

If manufacturers do run with it, they would use Sonoma, a future version of Intel's Centrino, a bundle of chips for wireless notebooks, which includes its Pentium M processor, a set of chips and a wireless module.

"You probably could not build a machine with this size and weight with anything but Centrino mobile technology. At 8 pounds, it's probably lighter than some of the home gaming clamshells," Trainor said.

But even though Florence Digital Home is likely to gain attention, selling all-in-one desktops has traditionally been more difficult than standard desktops or clamshell notebooks.

IBM, for one, got out of the business in 2002. Last year, however, the company showed off two convertible ThinkPad designs that morphed into more desktoplike models.

Apple Computer, Gateway and start-up Pelham Sloane have released new all-in-one desktops in the last few months, showing that the market does have some legs.

Intel believes that its concept could catch on, even if a desktop with a notebook processor is somewhat unusual.

"As more and more people desire the benefits of mobility and freedom, we're seeing market segmentation or finer tuning of designs for different lifestyles. We think that's wonderful," Trainor said.

Intel's two business notebook prototypes, On-the-Go, a lightweight notebook based on a 12-inch screen, and Virtual Office, a communications-centric notebook with a 15.4-inch-wide screen, are aimed at people who travel often or need to work remotely.
.

The CivilNote 200 features a Pentium 100 processor with 40 MB RAM, 1 GB hard disk, 10.4-inch flat screen colour display, 2 PCMCIA slots, 1.5 hour battery backup and comes with a one-year warranty and is priced at Rs 19,999 (end-user price). The notebook is manufactured by Pushpam Infotech, Pune with parts supplied from Taiwan.
Jain says that the notebook will be able to use Windows 95 or 98, Office 97 and Tally accounting software on the machine if required.
Increasing PC Penetration in India
ICT3 Quarterly (Skoch Consulting) has an interesting roundtable on affordable computing in India. What is very interesting is the wheel of penetration for increasin IT usage in India.


Have been tracking Emergic's views on low-cost PC and their penetration in India.
What we need urgently is that a technological orientation among our politicians and bureaucrats. They should know the must role of technology in today's world. Last but least, the awakening of masses in this endeavour is a must.
The discussion on low cost computing strategy (on the Skoch site) and the accompanying graphic make interesting reading.
World’s lightest and thinnest pocket PC now in India

HCL Frontline, the distribution arm of HCL Infosystems, India’s premier information enabling company, has announced the launch of a slew of Toshiba products, aimed specifically at the Indian market. In line with the global trend of notebook PCs outselling Desktops, HCL Frontline is targeting an increase of 70-80 per cent in mobile products in India by introducing a number of state-of-the-art mobile and technology products from Toshiba. HCL Frontline is the exclusive distributor for Toshiba notebooks in India.

Foremost among the technology products launched, the Pocket PC e310 is the attention grabber..

The other winner launched by HCL Frontline in the notebook segment is the Pentium 4 based Satellite 2400, which comes integrated with Bridge Media Technology. HCL is also introducing a fully loaded notebook at an attractive price of Rs 75,990 – the first of its kind in India. This value performance model is designed with a 1.2Hz processor 128 MB RAM, 20 GB Hard Disk, 24X CD, Win XP Home and comes with a one-year international warranty.

HCL Frontline, which recently got India's largest single order for 611 Toshiba notebooks from PricewaterhouseCoopers, is clearly looking to snag the market. "Toshiba has retained the No.1 market share in the world again, and has moved up to the No. 2 position in the Indian market place with an impressive 22% market share," said Mr Rajendra Kumar, Vice President – Operations, HCL Frontline Division. Toshiba has displaced IBM from the number two slots in India.


HCL Frontline Division forged an exclusive alliance with Toshiba in 1997 to market and support the Japanese giant’s notebook computers in the country. Through HCL Frontline, Toshiba already markets five families of notebooks in India - Toshiba Satellite, Satellite Pro range, TE, Portege and Tecra.
INSTITUTIONAL MARKETING
Dell Enhances Indian Enterprise Mobility

Dell has recently launched a new range of notebooks and mobile workstations for the Indian enterprise market.

The company's new offerings include its next generation workstations- Dell Precision M90 and Dell Precision M65.

Rakesh Mandal, Senior Brand Manager, Dell Precision -South Asia and Australia and New Zealand said that the new products would give customers the freedom to replace their desktop workstations without compromising on the performance.

On the unique features of the products, he said that Dell Precision M90 has Intel Core Duo processors, up to 17 inch wide-aspect displays and up to 512MB high-performance NVIDIA Quadro FX OpenGL graphics. This enables parallel processing when running multi-threaded applications and efficient operation of multiple applications concurrently would be of special use for financial analysts.

Dell Precision M65 allows workstation users to power through complex applications, such as digital content creation and financial analysis. Moreover, its Wi-Fi options allow it to deliver exceptional engineering design, analysis and content creation anytime and anywhere.

Dell has also announced two other products, Dell Latitude D620 and Latitude 820, slimmer and lighter Notebook computers targeted at business customers. Additional features include hyper connectivity, Wi-Fi catcher, added layer of security of biometrics and extended battery life.

Commenting on the other two products, Mandal informed that in 2005, more business customers worldwide selected Dell Latitude notebook computers over any other business notebook. The business notebook market is experiencing rapid growth with an increase in unit sales of 25% globally. During this period Dell experienced almost 37% increase in this space and achieved market share of 19%.

The base configuration for D620 and D820 are priced at Rs45,590 and Rs56,177 respectively. On the other hand, the new mobile workstations Precision M90 M65 are priced at Rs 119200 and Rs 109000, respectively.
BUYER BEHAVIOUR
Buyer behaviour in a regional thoroughbred yearling market
This paper reports the results of a hedonic pricing analysis of a regional thoroughbred auction market, adding to a literature which has been built mainly on data from elite auction markets. The main contribution of the paper is the finding that the role of the dam in affecting yearling price, elusive in the existing literature, is shown to depend primarily on information about progeny performance rather than dam performance. Additional results confirm existing knowledge about the roles of the sire, yearling sex, and yearling age, and support suspicions that race horses are consumer rather than investment goods.
Buyer beliefs, attitudes and behaviour: foods with therapeutic claims
Builds on past studies in the USA and assesses the market potential for functional goods through investigating consumer needs and attitudes. Aims to add to past research through: assessing consumer knowledge and beliefs on nutrition and diet-health relationships; analysing the influence of such knowledge and beliefs of information and sources of information; and evaluating the effectiveness and implications of government preventative health campaigns on purchase behaviour. Concludes that issues regarding personal and national health are extremely important because of the financial costs and human suffering that could be involved; and that functional goods, as a relatively new phenomenon, still need to be examined further with regard to their influence on trust and legitimacy in buyer behaviour.
Discounting and Its Impact on Durables Buying Decisions
The phenomenon of discounting is well established in the economics literature. However, this research has traditionally assumed that households have a single discount rate and make all intertemporal tradeoffs based on that rate. More current research in decision making and marketing has challenged the economics approach to intertemporal choice behavior. In this article, we propose two aspects of discounting research that are particularly relevant to consumer behavior toward durable goods. We propose first that consumers have individual discount rates for product categories. The second proposition is that, in a multiattribute modeling context, consumers have different discount rates for different attributes. We also discuss the strategic implications of these discount phenomena for marketing managers.

‘Drop in price-points was a catalyst’

The domestic notebook market, which was at around 35,000 units a year in 2002, has grown by 10 times and is estimated to touch 3.6 lakh units in 2005. Taiwanese major Acer is at the forefront of this ‘laptop’ revolution with an aggressive pricing strategy. The company, which had launched a sub-Rs 30,000 laptop, has launched another variant of an entry level notebook priced at Rs 26,000 recently. S Rajendran, Acer’s general manager for Consumer Products Group, says his company has managed to expand its market share to 16% from 9% three years back. Here he talks about the growing popularity of laptops:

What is propelling laptop sales? Will they, like in the West, outsell desktops?
It is a combination of factors: better telecom infrastructure (enabling facile access to the Internet); increasing income levels; changing demographic profiles; and buyer behaviour. The reduction in price points for notebooks acted as the catalyst to enable explosive growth in this category. With the price delta between an entry-level notebook and a mainstream desktop narrowing, we certainly do see instances where the customer tends to pay a small premium for a notebook in return for improved mobile productivity. Still, given the low IT penetration in India, desktops (which is currently 92%- plus of the market) would continue to dominate for the next two years in the least.

Laptop prices have been south-bound over the last year? Do you anticipate this to continue? What is driving this trend?

Currently, we believe the price point for a good functional entry level notebook has about reached the sweetest price point in the industry. The industry expects that in the next few quarters, due to firming up of prices on some key components (like LCD displays) there could be a small uptick on the price points.

However, the customer would continue to derive best value for money for this category from the industry. The notebook market is in the midst of an unprecedented boom. Industry estimates indicate that the market for notebooks is galloping at over 100% plus growth annually. This is expected to continue into 2006 as well.

What should first time buyers of laptops consider before making an investment?

Application is key: thus the first time buyer needs to consider the usage needs as germane to him or her and then consider key features like adequacy of memory, storage capacity, need for connectivity, weight of the unit, and processing power. Thereafter he should consider an acceptable price band that meets his budget. Important factors in the consideration set should be the reputation of the brand, the spread of after-sales support network (Notebooks unlike desktops are more sophisticated in design and build and need specialised technical knowledge for support) and the extent to which the unit would be future proof (a two-year life span for notebooks should be reasonable).
POST SALE SERVICE FACTORS

The quality of customer service departments varies greatly. At one extreme are departments that simply transfer customer calls to the appropriate person or department for action, with little follow-up. At the other extreme are departments eager to receive customer requests, suggestions, and even complaints and handle them expeditiously.

In providing service, most companies progress through a series o stages. Manufacturers usually start out by running their own parts-and-service department. They want to stay close to the equipment and know its problems. They also find it expensive and time-consuming to train others, and discover that they can make good money running the parts-and-service business. As long as they are the only supplier of the needed parts, they can charge a premium price. In fact, many equipment manufacturers price their equipment low and compensate by charging high prices for parts and service. (This explains why competitors manufacture the same or similar parts and sell them to customers or intermediaries for less.)


Bibliography


Books and Magazines

Marketing Management by Kotler Philip - 11th Edition, page no- 465
PC Quest, march 2005
Data Quest, November 2005


Internet

www.hp.com
www.acer.com
www.ibm.com
www.wipro.in
www.dell.com
www.channeltimes.com
www.techfree.com
www.news.moneycontrol.com
www.expresscomputeronline.com
www.forum.techspot.in
www.forrester.com
www.forum.techarena.in
www.skoch.org
www.domain-b.com
www.business-standard.com
www.hclinfosystem.com
www.us.rediff.com
www.etstrategicmarketing.com
www.gombar.in
www.emergic.org
www.bizwarmatic.com
www.web.info.com