Gateway joins notebook price cuts

Gateway will be the first major notebook vendor to respond to yesterday's mobile processor price cuts by Intel, as it prepares to trim the cost of Pentium II-based systems on Friday.

In a limited price action, the North Sioux City, South Dakota, company will discount its Solo 5100 XL Pentium II notebook by $100 to $3,799, according to sources close to the company. The high-end portable incorporates a 266-MHz Pentium II chip, 64MB of memory, a 14.1-inch active matrix display, a 4GB hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, and 56-kbps cellular modem.

Gateway will also lower the cost of its 200-MHz Pentium MMX Solo 2300 SE from $1,899 to $1,699. The older model also comes with 16MB of memory, a 12.1-inch display, 2GB hard drive, and CD-ROM drive.

Yesterday, Intel cut the price of the 233-MHz and 266-MHz mobile Pentium II processors that were launched at the beginning of this month, and also reduced the cost of older Pentium MMX chips. The chip cuts range from 8 percent up to 42 percent.

Two smaller notebook makers slashed prices the same day. But Acer cut costs on Pentium MMX systems, while WinBook discounted a model that uses an Advanced Micro Devices K6 processor.

Earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard also cut prices on notebook models using the MMX chip, to make room for Pentium II models announced earlier this week.

Meanwhile, IBM today introduced new "thin and light" models in its popular ThinkPad line. Though higher-end systems, the new 600 systems are priced closer to the $3,500-$4,000 range than the $5,000 price point where top-flight systems previously debuted.