IBM Corp currently has some 300 to 400 pilots of its Network Station network computer running at the moment and will have 8,000 to 10,000 installed internally by the end of the year, hears Merrill Lynch & Co. The bank also reckons IBM could have shipped as many as 100,000 of the units by then. Merrill was also quite impressed with a device sitting on the desk of Network Computer division general manager Bob Dies, which had a 14 flat panel display and cost around $6,000, although Dies said the company was aiming to get the cost of the unit down to under $1,000 eventually. It is also mulling plans to do a mobile NC, looking like a laptop and using flash memory for disconnected users on the road.
