IBM reveals its Big Bang PC theory

The revamp of Big Blue's PC range is set to give its competitors a run for their money. Mike Magee in Paris.

IBM has shaken up its PC range in a move which it claims will blow run for their money. Mike Magee in Paris. the competition away.

At a Paris launch last week called Big Bang, Doug LeGrande, head of the IBM PC Division EMEA, said the manufacturer would produce 1,000MHz products within three years and would attack its rivals on product range and price.

'IBM's PC technologies are the most price competitive in the industry. IBM's breadth of offerings is what our competitors are trying to emulate,' he said.

IBM looked forward to future high-speed products, saying the copper chip technology it announced last year was starting to filter through into actual products. It will produce a 1,000MHz processor within the next few years.

LeGrande said: 'You can compare us with the likes of HP, Compaq, Dell and Toshiba - we mean to blow the competition away.'

Big Blue announced a series of products in the notebook, server and desktop ranges, some based on Intel's latest Pentium II processors. The IBM 300PL uses these processors running at 350MHz and 400MHz, as well as the 100MHz bus version.

The manufacturer also announced a model in its Intellistation workstation range, based on the same technology, which it claimed outpaces Intel machines from Hewlett Packard and Compaq and Risc ones from Sun.

Adelio Sanchez, general manager of IBM's mobile division worldwide, claimed the market was worth $12 billion in EMEA and said it was growing at an annual compound rate of 15 per cent, with Thinkpads outperforming this at an annual rate of 64 per cent.

He added that prices have fallen and notebooks are now available to small businesses and home users.