Dell Computer Corp’s Gigabuys.com general retail web site, and iDOT.com, the Austin, Texas-based PC company that specializes in selling over the web, are both now selling the BeOs operating system from Be Inc. Gigabuys sells a wide range of computer- related products, not necessarily tied to Dell PCs – but Be said anyway that BeOs expands the the market appeal of Dell desktop computers by delivering a low-cost real-time digital media creation environment.
The iDOT deal, however, is one of the first to see a North American PC maker bundle in the BeOS operating system with its hardware. The 336K6-2 BeOS Series machine is priced at $449, and iSOT said it would offer high-levels of multimedia performance at a low price. In Japan, Hitachi Ltd launched its multi-boot Flora Prius 330J PC desktop computer with BeOS pre-installed at the end of last year. The system uses a 333MHz K6-2 processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc, has 32Mb of SDRAM, and 4.3Gb hard drive.
The company is aiming the system at graphic artists and designers. It comes with the BeatWare Mail-It email client and the Gobe productive set of office applications, and the recently shipped version 4.5 edition of the operating system includes a web browser, media player, TV viewer, 3D audio mixers and various utilities. BeOS claims there are now over 1,000 applications available for BeOS.
