One of the few European personal computer manufacturers with a PowerPC presence at CeBIT was Peacock AG of Wunnenberg Haaren. The company had two machines on its stand, both based on the PowerPC 601. One machine was a 120MHz 601 prototype, the other a 66MHz production box, dubbed the Powerserver 9164. Peacock has cut a deal to take boards from IBM Corp and the Powerserver can come pre-loaded with AIX. But according to the company’s assistant director of systems, Christof Basener, it is Windows NT applications that are needed to sell the product. You need native applications running, and that is what we are waiting for – and this is why no-one but Apple could sell PowerPC-based machines… now we have some applications, mainly in areas like deskt op processing and computer-aided design, but when we say we need more applications, in Germany, that means Microsoft Office. Basener jovially suggested that we change the subject when it came to discussing how many have gone out, or for how long the Powerserver has been shipping. Indeed one of his stand team told us the next day that the price of the server had yet to be fixed, and would be announced in the next month or two. However, Basener himself suggested prices in the $15,000 range. Both agreed, however, that the PowerPC machines would initially cost more than equivalent Pentium servers. Manufacturing volume considerations outweighed any differential in processor pricing, they explained.
