'Small is beautiful'

By Doug Young and Baker Li

TAIPEI: Bye bye, big beige boxes.

A final death knell for boring computers housed in bland metal cases may be years away, but a group of up-and-comers is ushering in a new breed of small, stylish models that look just at home in the living room as the office.

Many of those newcomers were on show in Taiwan this week at Computex, the world's third-biggest PC trade fair, with models cased in racy cartoon covers, plexiglass and miniature frames beckoning to the design conscious.

"Being stylish and being digital is a theme," said Sherry Wang, a sales manager at Micro-Star International Co Ltd, whose Mega PC looks more like a mini hi-fi, than a computer thanks to a fascia that incorporates a radio tuner and liquid crystal display.

For Shuttle Inc, an innovator of compact PCs, the new trend has been a wild success. Its XPC range of toaster-sized models are available with casings made from shiny metal and plexiglass in a range of colours and designs.

Part of the idea is to let users customize their computers, said James Chang, system development director. "We can change the chassis covers and even the front panel," he said.

Chang said Shuttle is selling about 50,000 XPCs a month and orders are strong heading into the holiday season.

Since their introduction last year, compact PC sales have grown to half of the company's revenues and about 70 percent of its profits. It previously concentrated on making computer motherboards.

Analysts expect Shuttle's net profits to soar to T$700.5 million ($20.8 million) this year from T$288 million in 2002, a view that has helped its shares more than double year-to-date.

SMALL BOX, BIG POTENTIAL

Goldman Sachs analyst Henry King said compact PC sales will probably account for less than five percent of the 100-110 million desktop PCs that will be sold this year. But he predicted the market share could grow to double digits within five years.

"The trend is definitely to try to downsize the PC," he said. "After Shuttle has been successful in this segment, other motherboard makers are following."

While Apple Computer Inc's mould-breaking iMac computers is aimed at bringing fresh designs to the mass market, compact PCs are so far appealing to niches. Students short of space, a hard core that needs something small enough to lug to a PC game party and people who just think big is ugly.

"You don't want a big, heavy PC sitting in your living room," said Marc Yang, an official of Gigabyte Technology Co, which is selling a compact PC with hi-fi style controls.

These computers look positively overweight, however, alongside the EZgo, a PC that is about the size of a Walkman CD player and weighs just under a kilogram.

"It's the smallest, lightest PC in the world right now," claimed Denny Chen of EZgo's manufacturer, Atoz Technology. Chen said the computer could be mounted in the back seats of cars and cabs, in golf carts and in store kiosks.

The new designs have had to overcome a range of technical issues. Chang of Shuttle said excessive noise and heat and potential performance problems raised problems that would not be present with larger boxes.

Transparent-cased models also failed to block electromagnetic waves that could potentially interfere with phone and radio waves in the home or office, he said.

"Transparent is good to look at, but it has some issues," he said.

Chen said heat was a problem for Atoz's super small computers, especially since the faster the CPU -- the brain at the heart of each computer -- the greater the heat given off.

"Thermal is always a problem with compact PCs," he said.

© Reuters