HP Joins the Sub-$1000 PC Club
September 10th, 2007
Hewlett-Packard today joined a handful of PC vendors shipping Intel Pentium PCs for less than $1000. Consumers shopping for desktops priced less than a grand can choose among offerings from Packard Bell, Monorail, AST and expected later this month Compaq.
An entry-level HP Vectra VE, with 120-MHz Pentium processor, 1GB hard drive, and 8MB of RAM will carry an estimated street price of $931, down from $1056. A P-133 model will sell for $967, a $206 price cut. The new pricing takes effect tomorrow.
Price drops of 7 to 17 percent are also in effect for the HP Vectra VL line and the Pentium Pro-based Vectra VA business models.
While HP’s Vectra systems do not include a monitor, vendors such as Packard Bell and Monorail fit small screens into their sub-$1000 packages. The Packard Bell C115 includes a 14-inch monitor for $999. However, users wooed by the Monorail PC’s easy-on-the-eyes price of $899 may squint at the 10.4-inch dual-scan LCD display, which can handle only 640-by-480 resolution and 256 colors.
Consumers are enjoying a buyer’s market, thanks to anticipated Intel chip price reductions, competition from chip maker Cyrix, and the expected announcement of Compaq’s sub-$1000 Presario 2000 series. Studies by research firm International Data Corporation show that nearly two-thirds of American households do not own a personal computer, with the average $2000 price tag cited as a chief deterrent.
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