Compaq Computer Corp accompanied its new product blitz yesterday with the news that it will no longer publish suggested list prices for its machines in the US – but unlike IBM Corp with its mainframes, it’s not tearing up the price list. Instead it will take a stab at forecasting the street price for its machines, giving the price it reckons that resellers will typically ask. The company’s first entry for the embryonic multimedia computer market is the ProLinea CDS, which comes with a CD-ROM drive, 16-bit sound board, modem, external speakers and four CD-ROM titles at $1,700. The price cuts are 9% on notebooks, including the Contura 3/25 at $1,500, the 3/25c at $2,000 and the colour Lite/25c at $3,000; 15% on desktops, so that the cheapest 80386 desktop model without a screen is now $750 and the Deskpro 486 is $1,400; the Pagemarq printer is now $2,600. The company unveiled 33 new desktop models, including an 80486-based Prolinea PC with the company’s proprietary local bus graphics at $1,100, and a ProLinea 4/66 at $2,000. There are new 80486-based Contura notebooks, starting with a 4/25 with a black and white display that is $2,000, a 4/CX model weighing 6.7 lbs with 8.4 colour display at $3,300m, and a 4/25C, same weight, with a 9.5 colour display and trackball at $2,700. The new mid-range DeskPro/i models, starting at $1,850, are preconfigured with a 16-bit Ethernet network interface controller. Higher-end models of the 80486 DeskPro/M now have 8Mb standard at from $2,400. New 340Mb hard disk models of its desktops and a new colour 151FS Full Square flatter monitor complete the line-up.
