After chopping prices on its Vectra personal computer products earlier in the year, Hewlett-Packard Co has announced it is extending the three dimensional graphics workstation family. Hewlett Packard says it intends to be the market leader in the NT workstation arena, and believes new products will help it on its way. Running on an Intel Corp 200MHz Pentium Pro Processor and Windows NT, the company has decided not to go with its own RISC and Unix system. The HP Vectra XW Graphics Personal Computer Workstation series will be upgraded with the addition of higher performance mid-range and high end models. Hewlett-Packard says the high-end Vectra XW is the first in the market to incorporate the new AccelEclipse graphics system, developed by AccelGraphics. The graphics system is said to enable NT users to transform their system into a 3D powerhouse. AccelEclipse incorporates the REALimage chipset, developed by Evans and Sutherland Corp, the Salt Lake City, Utah company that earlier in the year announced plans to install a $150,000 graphics subsystem in $11,000 workstations (CI No 3094). AccelEclipse is available with up to 32Mb of RAM, and is said to enable designers to complete their work faster, and takes away the need for professionals to use specialized high-end systems. Larry Sennett, Hewlett Packard’s communication manager at its headquarters in Palo Alto, California said the company had chosen AccelEclipse because, at the time it was the best graphics sub system we could find. The Vectra XW comes with the HP TopTOOLS DMI-based management software. Hewlett-Packard says the software increases productivity by automating time-consuming tasks that would originally have had to have been done by management information system staff. The mid-range model incorporates the AccelPRO graphics engine and has a starting price of around $7,900, without a monitor and is expected to be available at the beginning May 1. The high-end model will be released at the beginning of June with a starting price of about $8,400.
