Acer America Corp, which really wants to be a player in the reconstituted minicomputer market, has been busy this week shoring up its defences at the low end. It introduced three fully integrated pre-loaded systems it believes will set a new price-performance standard in the one-to-24 user Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix marketplace. The boxes will start as low as $3,325. All are based on the personal computer technology Acer introduced last quarter, which it says was architected from the start to support Unix. They include the EISA-based 50MHz 80486DX2 1700 and 66MHz 80486DX2 3500, based on the AcerPower 80486e system. The 1700, priced at $3,941, includes 128Kb of level two cache and a 210Mb drive. The $5,595 3500 includes 256Kb level-2 cache and a 520Mb SCSI drive. The very low-end 900 is based on Acer’s claimed to be popular 33MHz 80486DX Acros AT personal computer with 64Kb level two cache, support for a Weitek Corp 4167 maths co-processor and 210Mb IDE drive. All feature 8Mb of memory, expandable to 64Mb. They will come pre-loaded with the Altos-Santa Cruz System V/386 3.2 version 4.1 introduced this month and enhanced to include greater reliability under heavy user loads, autoconfig, a multi-volume back-up utility and disk performance improvements. Packaged in two configurations and one upgrade option, it will enable users to choose between feature sets. The base version of the operating system will cost $1,300 and the advanced for $1,650. Upgrades for existing users will go for $700.
