Intel and IBM show off their Web feats

PC Company and chip giant join forces to produce OS and software replication technology that monitors Net PC savings

The IBM PC Company and Intel have jointly produced a system to allow IT managers to replicate operating systems and software from a central location to Net PCs.

Karl LaWall, US programme director at IBM PC, said the systems enabled the company to quantify how much individual companies could save by using Net PCs instead of other desktops. The technology, dubbed IBM Lan Client Control Manager (LCCM), is available to other vendors making Net PCs from IBM?s Web site.

?If you are Dow or Shell, your business is not running around fixing PCs but making products for your own customers,? said LaWall, claiming that analysts? estimates of cost of ownership were wrong.

?Virtually every customer does an FDISK and a format when they get a machine, and that?s an expense. Customers can save $100 per machine just on that. Over the life of the system, that alone will be worth over $600 per machine.?

LaWall indicated that Big Blue would sell the Net PC for not much less than its existing desktop machines. He said: ?This is not an inexpensive machine. We can?t do it cheap. The first machine uses a Pentium MMX chip and comes with a lot of memory. We?re going to do a Pentium II system as well.?

Meanwhile, IBM claimed that it had sold 14,000 of its Net Station network computers (NCs) since the machine?s introduction on 28 March.

Derek Ashmore, director of marketing and operations at IBM EMEA, said: ?If you want to do PC things, why should you want to buy anything other than a PC??

?It if looks like a duck and walks like a duck, buy a duck. If you want a Net Station and it looks like a swan and walks like a swan, buy a swan.?