INEL company, a Russian hardware vendor, announced its obligation to provide its customers with the cheapest possible computers. The intention is to make the models costing below US$ 300 continuously present in the company's portfolio. INEL has already sold computers in sub-300$ class under two marketing programs, "Computer for Schoolchild" (including AMD K6-200 processor, 1.6 Gb HDD, 16Mb RAM in base configuration) and "Computer for Business" (Cyrix 233, 2 Gb HDD, 16Mb RAM).

Actual configuration of such computer is continuously changing, as the costs of the components are going down steadily. Thus, the customer is being offered more and more advanced models for the same price. For example, 1.6 Gb HDD was standard for such machine last summer, yet this digit rose to 2.0 Gb by winter. As to now, INEL offers the computer with IDT WinChip 200MHz processor, 16Mb RAM, 3.2 Gb IDE HDD, 1Mb PCI SVGA card, mouse, keyboard, and ATX case for as little as US$ 255 in retail.

"At the moment, the share of sub-300$ computers is about 25% of total computer sales in Russia," says INEL manager Andrew Tolstikov. "As may be see from the business practice, more than half of them (about 55%) are being sold without CD-ROM, and about 60% are stripped of the sound card. Speaking briefly, the customers vote for affordable models."

Source: InfoArt News Agency

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