NEC Unveils Cool, Quiet Crusoe-Based PCs

NEC on Wednesday released an all-in-one desktop PC which runs quietly without fans and features low power consumption. The company also unveiled a new line-up of notebook PCs, including a model which offers twice the battery life of previous models.

NEC's MA90W/F Mate desktop PC is an all-in-one desktop PC which includes a 15-inch TFT color LCD panel.

The MA90W/F carries either a 900-MHz or 800-MHz Crusoe TM5800 processor, which allows for low power consumption and generates less heat. As the PC's power-source units are placed inside the AC adaptor, a processor fan and a power-source fan are not needed, meaning the PC is exceptionally quiet, according to a NEC statement.

In comparison with previous models of the Mate series, the company has managed to reduce the new models' power consumption by 16 percent, it says.

The basic Mate desktop model is equipped with either the Windows XP Professional or Windows 2000 Professional operating system, 128 MB of synchronous dynamic RAM, a 20GB hard disk drive, and an Ethernet interface for $1916.

Notebook News

Among the new models of NEC's VersaPro notebook PC series unveiled Wednesday, the VA10J/VH features a 3.3-hour battery life, which is twice as long as the company's previous notebook models, the statement says.

In addition to an internal modem and an Ethernet interface, the product can be equipped with an IEEE 802.11b interface for wireless LAN access and Bluetooth as options, the statement says.

The VA10J/VH VersaPro carries a 1-GHz mobile Pentium III processor, 128 MB of SDRAM, a 20 GB hard disk drive, and a 12.1-inch TFT color LCD panel for $1807.

The Mate and VersaPro series are only targeted at the Japanese corporate market and the company has no shipment plans for overseas markets, the company said. The company will start shipping them for corporate users in Japan on May 15, it says.