San Francisco-based Lightning Computer Corp, the company committed to undercutting every other contender with the cheapest high performance personal computers in the business, has clinched a strategic multimedia agreement with fractal compression firm Iterated Systems Inc while launching into the Pentium market with its latest Thunderbird PC. The deal with Iterated signed on August 2 will see Lightning shortly announcing graphics workstations based on its existing systems with Iterated’s hardware-based compression-decompression system installed. Iterated’s fractal comression technology has already been used in Microsoft Corp’s multimedia titles and in Iterated’s own software products. Lightning is also using the fractal compression technique itself in a deal with at least two major studios which will result in classic films being released on CD-ROM. The films, playing at 30 frames per second at full screen with a blocky resolution of 320 by 200 pixels, will ship on both sides of the Atlantic under the Lightning name and will be playable on any 80386 machine with a CD-ROM drive. As a final touch to the deal, Lightning has also set up a service bureau to do fractal compression and write graphic data onto CD-ROM for software developers. The graphics personal computers will be based on the Pentium and 80486 chips. Lightning says that it will be able to offer network videoconferencing as a turnkey system using the machines and 100Mbps adaptors. The Thunderbird Pentium machine, shipping in quantities of 500 per month, rising to double that in November, is based on the 60MHz chip. Using VESA Local Bus with 16Mb RAM and a 520Mb SCSI-2 hard drive, the machine costs $6,000. Richard McCabe, president of the company, dismissed the Alpha chip due to its lack of acceptance in the market, saying that he’d wait for the PowerPC RISC chip. The company is also offering trade-in deals on old 80286 and 80386 computers, offering enhanced 80486-based machines in return at manufacturing cost. Users can get an 80486DX2/66 box with 170Mb disk drive, Local Bus graphics and a 14 Super VGA monitor for $1,400 on an exchange. Old machines are sold by Lightning to local businesses, but the company doesn’t get many educational sales because, according to McCabe, Unlike the UK, few of the schools over here have any funds.
