IBM Corp has realized that computers don’t have to be off-grey, and has come out with a new line of Aptivas for home users, the S series, that are not only black, but come with a separate enclosure for the floppy and CD-ROM drives, so the processor box can be put out of the way somewhere, rather than cluttering work space. The drives and power controls are housed in what is described as a discrete slim media console that forms the base for the monitor. IBM has also customized the Windows95 desktop, centralizing all the communications functions, which can be launched from any of the mailboxes. Users can also dial in from a remote location to the Aptiva to get spoken playback of their electronic mail messages. The base model has a 166MHz Pentium and costs $2,500. The 200MHz model is $3,100 but the screen is $500 to $700 more.
