Taiwan's Via Technologies plans to promote PCs that will sell for close to $250 this fall in an attempt to gain ground in the consumer market.

The Terra PC is a reference design created by Via that will be licensed to PC makers around the world. The company will show off prototypes at the Computex trade show in Taipei next month, and systems are likely to hit the shelves in different markets worldwide by September or October, said Ravi Pradhan, Via's manager for India.

The proposed price for the Terra, which includes a monitor, is achieved by picking components with cost in mind. The system, for instance, will run an older 1GHz processor from Via, Pradhan said. It will also come with 128MB of memory, about one-quarter the amount found on typical desktops these days, and a small drive.

Via is also tinkering with the idea of selling a PC that uses the TV as a monitor, but this concept has been a tough sell in the past. The chipmaker, while primarily known for chipsets, has a small sliver of the x86 processor market.

PCs for price points in the $200 to $300 range are rare but have been popping up recently. Xenitis, a manufacturer in India, sells a PC with a configuration similar to Terra for about $238 (9,990 rupees), with a monitor.
Full story...


Source : CNET News