The Hindu Business Line : Now, lap it up for the price of a PC

MR PRASAD needs his computer with him every time he goes on tour. He wants to use his machine at home to catch up with work and play computer games. In office, he requires it obviously. So all that he needs to do is buy a laptop. But then he cannot afford to spend five times his monthly salary to buy one.

Enter IMO-Desk, the answer to his problem. Claimed to be the smallest desktop, it is a PC that looks and works like a laptop and costs just Rs 26,199 - about the price of a regular PC.

IMO-Desk is manufactured by Chaintech, a Korean-Taiwanese company that specialises in making motherboards and graphic cards. Jaipuria Advanced Technologies Ltd, a new entity under the Jaipuria Group, has been appointed the sole distributor of the product in India.

``The product is really a response to the need of a user to save on space and offer portability at a low cost. Chaintech simply took everything in the regular tower-type PCs and incorporated it in a small lap-top sized keyboard," says Mr Chandrakant Singh, Country Head of Jaipuria Advanced Technologies.

The IMO-Desk has an in-built CD-Rom drive, LAN (local area network) port, touch-pad, internal modem and everything else that Mr Prasad needs in his PC. It also has a touchpad, five speaker outlets and status indicators that normally come with laptops.

But it does not have a monitor and battery. ``The idea is that the user should be able to use his office monitor and home television with the PC. You can actually surf the net from the comfort of your bed with its remote control supporting all normal mouse functions," Mr Singh says. If a customer insists on a LCD screen, it can be separately fitted on the unit, he adds.

The IMO-Desk comes in two configurations. The lower end costs Rs 26,199 and has a Celeron chip of 2.4 GB (gigabytes) memory, while the top end costs Rs 33,199, comes with an Intel Pentium IV, 2.8 GB disk space and a 15 inch colour monitor worth Rs 3,800.

``Another advantage with the IMO-Desk is that it can be easily upgraded unlike a laptop that is rather inflexible and the cost of upgrades can be prohibitive. With this unit, you can just get it to us and we will upgrade it just the way you could get your PC packed with more punch,'' he says.

So, Mr Prasad can now derive the functionality and snob value of a laptop at the cost of a simple desktop!