Eurocom Preps Mobile Workstation

Pricing for the systems, dubbed Phantom D900, also will be at somewhat of a premium, starting at $2,499 for a base unit with a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4, 512 Mbytes of memory and a 40-Gbyte hard drive. That configuration is priced without an operating system.

Tim Schonberg, account manager at Eurocom, said the systems will begin shipping Nov. 8, but the company will take preliminary orders through then.

By rolling out the lineup of high-performing mobile workstations, Eurocom is aiming at perhaps the most opportunity-rich product segment in the channel. According to CRN's Monthly Solution Provider Survey for August, solution providers remained the most optimistic about near-term notebook sales than any other line of technology.

Desktops, while also rated strongly by solution providers, according to CRN research, significantly lagged behind notebooks.

Besides processors and memory, Phantom D900 systems will be configurable for larger hard-drive capacities--up to 320 Gbytes of storage with multiple drives, including integrated PC cameras; TV tuners with dual monitor support via a DVI-I port; and an internal subwoofer.

While the company seems as if it is poised to tap into a growing mobile space as it now exists, President Mark Bialic said the high-performance workstations are really better positioned to siphon sales from the desktop segment.

"Customers, say, in the engineering market, don't have mobile computers," Bialic said. "This is a big opportunity to grow the market. This is more of a desktop replacement."

Bialic said the Phantom D900 is aimed at a basic use model that relies on uninterrupted power supply availability, as configurations based on current technology would permit one-hour battery life. "With mobile workstations, totally different rules apply," Bialic said. In a typical work scenario, an engineer would bring the notebook to a customer's site and "when it's done, be able to burn a DVD with the data right there," he said.