A Page From The Cola Wars?

It started many

years ago.

Remember when Sterling

Computers shook the PC market up with its then ultra-low

low prices for Siva PCs? Full-page ads in newspapers

quoted throwaway prices. For two years they did it,

before finally flopping belly up. Since then, at regular

intervals, one company or the other has unfailingly

stirred up the waters by starting off a fresh round of

price wars. It’s an Industry norm by

now–something like the Kumbh mela.

Round two to PCL, which

announced successively lower prices every month. Though

HCL and Wipro did respond, they did not exactly take the

war into the enemy camp. Potential buyers flocked to

PCL’s doors by the thousands, and as expected, PCL

could not sustain the tempo. Even today we get letters

from those who paid up front then, and are yet to get

their machines.

Much water has flown under

the bridges since then and many assembled systems have

been sold at Nehru Place, Lamington Road and Minto Park.

And as every thing was beginning to look boring and dull

again, here we go at it again. Welcome to the great

Indian PC price wars, version III.

As with the previous

versions, this one also has full-page advertisements

screaming specs and prices. But there is a difference,

and a big one at that. This time, almost all the MNCs in

the market barring Dell and Acer are in the act.

It started off with a

full-page ad from Compaq announcing a hard-to-believe Rs

39,990 price for the DeskPro 1000 (see our March review).

But there was some fine print: "Price excludes a

monitor." HCL’s response was fast: a full page

ad which said that its price of Rs 39,990 included

a monitor. Soon there was HP informing every one what

they would not get for Rs 39,990 from Compaq.

Digital joined the game with a half-page ad for the 3010,

and Simens-Nixdorf threw in a quarter-page for the Scenic

Pro D5. Even Big Blue India joined in the fun and games

with one that said that their PCs and servers were not

that expensive!

Surely it’s boom time

for the buyer? Yes. But which one is the better deal? Is

it the same specs that all the vendors are offering?

Here’s a comparison

of the specs on offer. (We could not get full details

from IBM and HP).

CPU Hard

Disk



Warranty

P200 MMX

1.6 GB



3 years limited

P166

MMX*1.2 GB



3 years

P200 MMX

1GB



1 year on site

P200 MMX

2.1GB



NA

P200 MMX

2.1 GB



3 years

Common Specs:

All PC configurations and prices featured here include

Intel Pentium MMX CPUs, 16 MB RAM, 256

kB of cache memory, and a 14" color

monitor.

Obviously computers are

not all made the same.

Read the cover story of

this issue to find out more about what these specs mean,

and what you should go in for.