AMAX Intros All-In-One PC, Storage Tools

The Fremont, Calif.-based company unveiled several of the new products at last week's Super Computer 2004 conference in Pittsburgh, believing the market is poised to begin adopting the new-look, new-function hardware.

"We believe they'll do well," said James Huang, product specialist at AMAX. The company chose to unveil the devices at the Super Computer show in the hope that the personal-computing products would grab the attention of performance users and other early adopters, he said.

AMAX took the wraps off its all-in-one LCD PC, a 3.2GHz Pentium 4-based system with a built-in, 17-inch LCD screen, integrated camera and 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity. Huang said the systems are being custom-built by a contract manufacturer in Korea.

"The all-in-ones started showing up [last year] during Computex in Taipei," Huang said, noting that the 17-inch display in an all-in-one box is a relatively new feature on a full-function desktop.

Of branded manufacturers, Sony has developed an all-in-one desktop, but others have largely stayed away from that form factor. Huang said he believes the space-saving configuration will garner attention and spur sales once it's shipped late this year or early next year.

In addition, AMAX rolled out a 42-bay, 8u, dual Xeon serial ATA RAID storage server; an 8u, 10-blade dual-Opteron server, scalable up to 20, 64-bit Opteron processors; a 3u, 16-bay Ultra 320 SCSI to Serial ATA Direct Attached Storage device for up to 4 Tbytes or more of capacity; and a 1u, 1-Tbyte Serial ATA NAS device.