Corel, Lenovo Bundle Up
The laptops and desktops will ship with Corel WordPerfect Office as well as trial versions of Corel's Draw, Photo Album , Paint Shop Pro X and CorelDraw "glued together" with Corel Small Business Center, said Richard Carriere, general manager for productivity software for Corel.
The Small Business Center's Task Manager promises to make it easier for the user to select and utilize the software he or she wants to use.
After the 60-day trial, customers can upgrade to full Corel Photo Album 6 Deluxe for $29, to Corel WordPerfect Office suite for $79. The cost for upgrading to the full Corel Small Business Center will cost $386.
The bundle will give VARs serving small business a viable alternative to Microsoft Office/hardware bundles, according to Corel. "This is all about selling a solution to small business instead of a value-priced PC with a glob of software," said Carriere. "This is a tier one PC maker and a tier one software vendor both offering very aggressive value price," he noted.
This bundle might not please system builder partners who are already struggling to offer white boxes loaded with productivity software and make some margin, however.
The intial bundles will be wih the WordPerfect Office 12 until the latest X3 release is ready, Carriere said.
IBM sold its PC business, including popular ThinkPad laptop line to Lenovo, just over a year ago. Lenovo's U.S. operations run out of Purchase, N.Y.