Who says local PCs cannot compete with the international products?<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): In terms of PC technology adoption, Indonesia
\nhas always been on the fast track, even though the economic
\ncrisis has drastically reduced the number who can afford new
\ntechnology the moment it becomes available here.<\/p>\n
Case in point: As Intel launched its latest generation of
\nmicroprocessors, the Pentium III, its local original equipment
\nmanufacturer (OEM) partners already were offering personal
\ncomputers (PCs) equipped with the latest and fastest processors.
\nAnd this time I was lucky enough not to have to wait too long to
\nget a taste of them. Courtesy of PT Multicom Persada
\nInternational, I was able to test drive an exciting machine
\npowered by a Pentium III 450 MHz processor.<\/p>\n
Multicom is one of the three leading local PC makers which are
\nfully supported by Intel Indonesia. The other two are PT
\nZyrexindo and PT Galva Technologies Corp. On the local market,
\nMulticom's PCs carry the Mugen brand. This computer maker, which
\nhas been making PCs since 1984, is not really known for low
\nprices, but the carefully selected components which they put in
\nevery PC they build justify the prices.<\/p>\n
To start with, my test system came with a decent speaker
\nsystem from Altec Lansing. It had a pair of satellite speakers
\nand one very powerful subwoofer, making listening to Ettore
\nBastianini's tenor voice singing Largo al factotum from Rossini's
\nThe Barber of Seville quite enjoyable.<\/p>\n
My test system had 64 MB of SDRAM. While 16 MB is generally
\nregarded as the minimum requirement to run Windows '95 and 32 MB
\nthe minimum to run Windows '98, you should have a minimum of 64
\nMB of RAM if you want to avoid a bottleneck in a Pentium III
\nsystem. Most high-end PCs nowadays are shipped standard with 128
\nMB of RAM.<\/p>\n
The ATX casing was sturdy and quite handsome. It came with a
\n36x CD-ROM instead of a DVD-ROM drive, and a pair of USB ports.
\nThe monitor which came with this PC was a very nice 15 inches. It
\ndisplayed sharp text and brilliant colors with very good
\ncontrast. This monitor also had a slew of controls which, in the
\npast, only could be found in high-end and larger computer
\nmonitors. The controls, such as vertical shift and geometry
\ncorrection, were easy to adjust. Although there was no on-screen
\ndisplay, the icons under each LED clearly indicated which
\nfunction was active.<\/p>\n
The Yamaha sound card already was built into the motherboard,
\nand Multicom had installed Station for me so that I could play my
\nOpera Weekend CD over and over. I didn't bother to take out the
\nkeyboard or mouse which they had included in the box. I just used
\nmy own IBM keyboard, which has a TrackPoint on it, and both
\nworked flawlessly with the PC. The hard disk was a fast 3 GB
\nQuantum Fireball, which actually was not big enough for a PC of
\nthis class.<\/p>\n
Test results<\/p>\n
Intel Corp. supplied me with a set of test programs.
\nUnfortunately, since there were no other Pentium III machine to
\ncompare performances against, the figures shown in the
\naccompanying picture don't really mean much.<\/p>\n
However, my informal tests did give some impressive results.
\nThe time to reboot -- from the moment I hit the Enter key after
\nselecting Restart until the time the system was ready to run an
\napplication -- was only 45 seconds for the Mugen PC as opposed to
\nthree minutes on a Compaq Presario with an AMD 233 MHz processor.
\nOf course the larger memory space of the Mugen PC, the slower
\nSeagate hard disk on the Presario and the fact that the latter
\nwas loaded with more information were significant contributing
\nfactors in the wide gap between their reboot times.<\/p>\n
Still, loading CorelPHOTO-PAINT took only 24 seconds on the
\nMugen PC as opposed to two minutes and 10 seconds on the
\nPresario. If you work on your computer 10 hours a day and you
\nneed to reboot your system frequently, buying a machine powered
\nby a Pentium III can actually increase your productivity.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, though, I could not get the latest version of
\nDragon NaturallySpeaking for the test, so I was unable to see how
\nmuch shorter the training time for speech recognition was with
\nthe Pentium III processor. Nonetheless, the Pentium III powered
\nMugen was clearly a fast machine. It's really a nice PC to work
\nwith, although, sadly, I could only keep it for two weeks.<\/p>\n
Our PC market<\/p>\n
Some notes are in order here. First, the prices of low-end PCs
\nare falling like crazy, and this is squeezing the profit margins
\nof PC makers operating in this segment. Compaq, for instance,
\nsold the most PCs in the United States last February, according
\nto a report from PC Data. While Compaq's sales in terms of units
\nrose 4.9 percent over the previous month, their revenue dropped
\nby 17 percent. This provides us with a clear indication of how
\ndifficult it will be for vendors to survive in the PC business in
\nthe future. Therefore, our local PC makers, including Multicom,
\nZyrexindo and GTC, must really work hard to find innovative ways
\nto reduce costs in order to maintain their viability.<\/p>\n
At the same time, competition in the Indonesian PC market is
\nnow even tougher with the arrival of Gateway, the second largest
\nbuild-to-order PC vendor in the U.S. On the brighter side,
\nthough, once we emerge from this economic crisis, demand for new
\nPCs will definitely soar as people realize they cannot live or
\nwork without them. So, let's all pray that the makers of our
\n\"National PC\" survive this difficult period along with the rest
\nof us.<\/p>",
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