Fall Fashion Forecast

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Fall Fashion Forecast: The case of the incredible shrinking computer

Original publication: Toronto Star, Fast Forward, October 26, 2000

As we swing deeply into the fall of the year 2000, the computer market continues to be a lively place to play. Computers are getting smaller and have brighter colours, faster processors, more memory, larger hard drives and the same scale of prices that has been in place for years ($5,000 for anything you want to under $1,000 for low-end alternatives).

Some old favourite models are gone, but the players remain about the same. The jockeying for position continues and the ways you can buy the pesky things keeps expanding.

Enough headlines; here's the nitty gritty...

Small is in

Dell is the only company of the top four multinational brands not to be aggressively marketing a small-footprint system. IBM has its NetVista series, Compaq has the iPAQ, and Hewlett Packard is focusing on the e-Vectra. We'll discuss these small (although not necessarily inexpensive) units in more detail below.

The top four international name brand companies in the Canadian market (in order, based on 2nd quarter 2000, sales - according to Toronto-based Evans Research Corp.), are IBM, Dell, Compaq, and Hewlett Packard. While collectively they hold a significant portion of the overall computer market, none of them holds the top - or even the second - position.

The lead of 23.5 per cent of the market is held by what's now generically called the "White Box," - meaning essentially an unbranded assembly of components - and represents a category that for several years I've been calling locally assembled systems provided by local retailers. Next in line at 15 per cent are "large Canadian suppliers," such as Seanix, IPC, Mynix and Mind (of which, only IPC targets the consumer market).

The total market, including both consumer and corporate purchases, PCs and Macs, desktops and notebooks is nearly evenly divided between multinational brands (54.4 per cent) and local systems (45.6 per cent - Distributor house brands - such as Supercom's "Touch" systems - also play a role here with just under 8 per cent.).

While some of the large Canadian suppliers offer Web sites where you can configure and order systems (IPC, for example), only three of the multinationals in the top rung do the same: Dell Canada (in it for as long as the company has existed), IBM Canada (a relatively new entrant in the past three years), and Compaq Canada (the newest convert) all now offer a "Buy Direct" component to their Web sites with Canadian pricing. Only HP Canada hasn't followed the lead of its US parent to offer an online "store" and consequently, finding pricing information on its products is more difficult.

Colours?

This is, after all, billed as a Fall Fashion forecast, so at least some mention of colour is appropriate. Apple continues to be the butterfly of the group, replacing their "fruity" colour choices of blueberry and so on with a new range of choices including indigo, ruby, snow, sage, and graphite. An orange shade is missing from the current lineup (and here it is, October, too).

Compaq has taken the largest leap in the PC community. Some of its Presario consumer systems have replaceable "skins" for system case, keyboard, and speakers in a range of colours that include Emerald Green, Amethyst Purple, Amber Orange, Sapphire Blue and Ruby Red.

IBM continues to offer off-white or black as its two choices (although at its Web site, there is a hint, with no specifics, that some towers may come in dark blue).

HP's cases are highly stylized with translucent dark blue fronts (and front doors) and tops.

Dell hasn't ventured into high fashion with its desktop systems - they continue to come in any colour you want, so long as it's off-white tan - but its Inspiron 3800 and 4000 series notebooks come in four colours (Tahoe Blue, Midnight Grey, Forest Green or Sierra Maroon).

New terminology

Particularly when you're looking at the new IBM or Compaq small-footprint NetVista or iPAQ models, a couple of relatively new examples of terminology are going to show up. But "Legacy Free" and "Legacy Light" may not mean what you think they do and the definition changes from company to company.

To begin with, "legacy free" once meant that the systems had no Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) expansion slots (where we once mounted graphics boards, modems, sound cards and lots of other internal expansion options). Companies don't even bother to mention that there are no ISA slots in many new systems shipping this fall. They've finally gone away in favour of the newer Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots. (So, if you're hoping to leverage the purchase of a new system by using older internal add-ins, you've waited too long.)

But for many of the small-format systems, Legacy Free means there are no internal expansion slots. You're not expected to expand or upgrade them or to open the cases at all. It may also mean that the traditional parallel, serial, game, mouse, and keyboard ports are missing; anything you want to connect to the outside of the unit needs to use Universal Serial Bus (USB) instead.

Even "Legacy Light" as Compaq explains it, means there are no expansion slots; but the company has given back the standard parallel, serial (etc.) ports in addition to USB connectivity.

Small stuff

Let's look at some detail of the small-format products. We're going to focus on IBM and Compaq because while HP's e-Vectra fits the basic description, the company has pitched the product squarely at the corporate, not consumer, market segment.

IBM's NetVista line has a lot of alternative models. In effect, it has replaced the company's venerable Aptiva S (for Stealth) series which is no longer available.

NetVistas come in slimline (A40p models), tower (A40i and A20i models), and all-in-one (X40i) format.

Processors for the NetVista series include everything: Intel Celeron and Pentium III, as well as AMD Duron and Athlon.

As of October 17, the fastest processors advertised were 933 MHz Pentium III and 1 GHz Athlon, while the slowest were the 566 MHz Celeron and 700 MHz Duron.

Price examples include: NetVista A20i, with 17" CRT monitor, 800 MHz Pentium III on 133 MHz front-side bus and Intel 810e chipset, 128 MB SDRAM memory, integrated graphics and modem, 12X DVD: $2,228

You can run that all the way up to $3,899 with a 19-inch monitor, 1 GHz Athlon, nVidia GEForce 2 graphics card and other enhancements.

The line's all-in-one X40i is quoted at $2,899 and has a 600 MHz Pentium III (on 133 MHz front-side bus, chipset not specified), 128 MB of SDRAM memory, 15 GB hard drive, integrated video and modem, 6X DVD, and 15-inch LCD monitor.

Its legacy-free system, the $2,299 S40p (monitor extra) does have one "low profile" PCI slot open, but there are no spare drive bays. It comes with five USB ports, 866 MHz Pentium III (133 MHz front-side bus, Intel 810e chipset), integrated video and modem, 20 GB hard drive, 128 MB of SDRAM memory, and 40X max CD-ROM.

Compaq's iPAQ has a much more limited range of choices (for classic desktop systems you need to shop its Presario or Deskpro lines). The two basic choices are legacy-free or legacy light (see above). In the legacy free models, prices range from $749 (Celeron 500 on 66 MHz front-side bus), 64 MB of SDRAM, 4.3 GB hard drive, no modem or CD-/DVD-ROM), to $1,249 (Pentium III 733 on 133 MHz front-side bus, 128 MB of PC100 SDRAM memory, 10 GB hard drive, no modem or CD-/DVD-ROM drive). Prices do not include shipping, handling, or monitor.

Other features

Processors: Across the board, processor speeds are up, but it's still difficult to find quantities of systems with processors running faster than 1 GHz - in fact only Dell is offering a Pentium III at that speed.

Processor speeds increased so often this year that manufactures have had a hard time figuring out how many systems to build with a specific processor. The result has been that models disappear from store shelves and do it sometimes faster than the normal cycle of release and review can be completed. Both IBM and HP were caught that way, sending me systems to review that were gone by the time they arrived, were tested, and the results were published.

However, that trend may slow down for a couple of months now that Intel's 1.13 GHz Pentium III was recalled. Running is sometimes defined as a controlled stumble. Perhaps this boo-boo will give both companies, Intel and AMD, time to take a breather before the processor speed spitting contests warm up again later in the winter.

Based on current prices, the "Sweet Spot" where price and performance are optimized, appears to be in the 800 to 933 MHz range.

Celeron, Pentium III, Athlon, and Duron: Pentium III (and soon, Pentium 4) and Celeron are Intel model names for its processors. Athlon and Duron are brand names from Advanced Micro Devices (or AMD). Cyrix MIII is VIA's name for its Celeron-equivalent, but the company still uses the old "Power Rated" or "PR" measuring stick so we don't know how fast they actually are (and subsequently don't care).

With the except of the Cyrix MIII, the speeds you're quoted (500 MHz, 1 GHz, etc.) are the <italic>internal<italic> speeds at which data is passed among the processor's components.

These internal speeds are always based upon a multiple of the speed at which data is passed outside the processor to areas such as main system memory, the Basic In/Out System (BIOS), the logic chipset and so on. For now, this data pathway is known as the front-side bus and there are four current speeds it can have: 66 MHz (Celerons), 100 or 133 MHz (Pentium III), and 200 MHz (Athlon and Duron).

The front-side bus speed plays a large role in overall system performance because no matter how fast data is manipulated within the processor, it does no good until it gets outside and goes somewhere else. The front-side bus speed, as well as the amount of level 2 cache memory in the processor (it varies by model) is why Celeron and Pentium III or Athlon and Duron aren't the same.

When the internal speeds of the processors are identical, Pentium III and Athlon run in nearly a dead heat. When Duron and Celeron are benchmarked side-by-side and both run at the same internal speed, the Duron system is faster (it's also likely less expensive).

Memory: The amount of memory you should expect to get, except in low-performance systems at the bottom of the price heap, has for the time-being standardized at 128 MB. However, the type of memory you get and the cost of adding more in the future, is going to depend heavily on whose chipset is controlling the system's motherboard.

Intel i820 and i840 chipsets now handle only Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM) after Intel recalled all motherboards using the i820 and a component called a Memory Translator Hub, earlier this year. The recall occurred when the company that this workaround did not allow i820-based motherboards to use SDRAM successfully. (Hint: this is something to be wary of in low-end systems offered by people you don't know.) DRDRAM is about twice as expensive as other types but so far hasn't shown comparable performance advantages.

Intel i810e and i815 chipsets still "speak SDRAM" but both of these chipsets can be configured to use integrated graphics. While in and of itself this isn't a bad alternative (it brings the price down), it's also not one you'll seek if you're looking for a high-performance system (because it also brings the system speed down). The only thing we know for sure about SDRAM (synchronous DRAM) is that it's on its way out.

Chipsets by VIA and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) may show up in either Intel or AMD processor-based systems. Newer versions of these chipsets may use a relatively new version of SDRAM, called Double Data Rate or DDR SDRAM. Think of this as the rest of the industry's answer to Intel's insistence that DRDRAM is the way to go. It's only about 10 per cent more expensive than classic SDRAM, but works at about twice the speed.

AMD, of course, also makes its own chipsets for Athlon- and Duron-based systems and is still providing SDRAM.

By the way, DRDRAM, SDRAM, and DDR SDRAM are not interchangeable. Not only do they require explicit chipset support, but physically they aren't the same and won't fit in the same slots.

Hard drive capacities: The amount of data you can store in a computer has risen astronomically. In low-end systems, it's rare to get one under 8.4 GB, but I expect to see 100 GB drives by the end of the year for higher-end systems. You'll get the largest you can afford, no matter what price point the basic system has.

Video: I noted above that there's a basic choice between video integrated into the motherboard (slower, but less expensive solution) or video on its own circuit board. A choice you no longer get is whether the video uses the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) bus. Today, that's all there is. You may get AGP 2x at the low end and AGP 4x at the mid-to-high end.

The nVidia GEForce graphics chipset is highly popular, but keep in mind that there are at least four different versions of it currently in circulation.

Both ATI and Matrox, as well as S3 and Diamond Multimedia continue to be players in the market at the higher end of the price scale.

Multimedia: Unless you intend to specialize in musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) music or very high-end gaming, the audio controller you get in today's systems will be adequate for the majority of users.

However, the choice of CD-ROM, CD-RW, or DVD-ROM drive is still a tickler. Quickly: CD-ROM drives only play back CDs (compact discs). CD-RW drives play back CDs, record new CDs and can re-write recorded CDs. DVD-ROM drives play back CDs, and Digital Video Discs (and there are still no affordable DVD drives that record in such a way that you can play the results back on anyone else's DVD drive).

Which to get? It's not hard in systems over $3,000 to get both a DVD and CD-RW drive. If I had to make a choice (albeit a subjective one), I'd choose CD-RW on the basis that there is no application or movie on DVD that isn't available on another medium.

Keyboards & mice: A mouse without a scrolling wheel is a waster of your time (even if you don't know it yet).

I have a couple of keyboards around with built-in volume controls and one-button invocation of various tasks. I use the Calculator button on one of them and can't seem to find a use for the rest of the extra controls. Nevertheless, in the leading-edge name brand systems, they're endemic and can't hurt you.

Nice extras: All other things being equal, I'd take the system with USB ports on both back and front.

If the system also has FireWire (aka IEEE 1394 or High-Speed Serial Bus), I'd want those ports on both front and back panels, too.

I'd take a system that came with speakers instead of being forced to buy a monitor to get them.

Fancy case design is a good thing right up until you want to add a component that sticks out the front (such as that CD-RW drive you decided not to get this year but want to add next year). Then it becomes a dilemma: do you want a drive that looks good, or just works good and costs a reasonable amount?

Contacting me