The traditional small business computer – those little old proprietary systems one up from a visible record computer, among which the IBM Corp System/36 is about the last survivor in the US and Europe, are still big business in Japan, but are now in process of being swept away by open systems, and NEC Corp hopes to accelerate the process with a new NEC Express Server 5800 series comprising three MIPS Technologies Inc R4400 RISC-based models and two Pentium models, all designed to run Windows NT 3.5, while NetWare 3.12J can also be used on the Pentium-based models. The Express 5800/250 model is based on a 200MHz R4400, can be configured with up to four CPUs, and costs from $19,700, while the 150MHz R4400 is from $13,500. The Pentium models use the 100MHz chip and are priced from $17,680. NEC expects to ship a total of 30,000 units over the next two years, positioning them for the Windows market, as distinct from the UP4800 series of Unix servers and the System 7200.
