London-based Elonex Plc is now selling NeXT Computer Inc’s NeXTstep 3.2 object-oriented operating system and application development environment pre-loaded on a specially designed line of personal computers in Europe. NeXT says it is keen to sign up local OEM customers to stimulate volume sales, while Elonex wants to diversify out of the desktop arena, which is dying out into new higher-margin areas, such as Unix – it already sells Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix and Novell Inc’s UnixWare. The NeXTStation range is targeted at applications developers working for large companies in such vertical markets as finance, telecommunications, education and the legal profession. It comprises the 66MHz Intel Corp 80486DX2-based PC-466B/VL, the 60MHz Pentium-based PC-560B/VL and the 60MHz Pentium-based PC-560F/VL. The PC-466B/VL comes with 256Kb of external cache, up to 64Mb of RAM, up to 4Gb of hard disk and a video adapter with an S3-928 graphics processor and 2Mb of Video RAM. The PC-560/VLs have 512Kb of external cache, up to 128Mb of RAM, a video adapter with an S3-928 graphics processor and 2Mb of Video RAM. Each comes with one of three versions of NeXTstep: the user edition – systems bundled with this range from UKP2,775 to UKP3,755; the developer edition, which ranges from UKP4,575 to UKP5,555, and the academic edition, which incorporates both of the above editions and ranges from UKP3,255 to UKP4,235. The two firms will market the products jointly, and say their target is to capture 20,000 users in the next 12 months.
