"What is taking place in the flat panel market is we've moved from 1999 where we had no supply, we couldn't get supply of the monitor... to the year 2000 where we could get supply ... to where we've moved into 2001 where there's enough supply now that there's significant cost and price reductions. What has happened is the price is coming down in the flat panel market and closing the gap between that and a CRT. We're seeing more movement from the flat panel unique sale into the mainstream."
For instance... IBM's new T540...
"The T540 is going to establish a new lower price point for IBM. It runs 1024 by 768, we'll introduce it in April at a cost of 599 dollars list price. Now if you go back to the fourth quarter of last year, the monitor that was holding this space for us was over 900 dollars."
IBM is introducing three other new models as well. Besides appearances... there are some big advantages to flat panel screens...
"Space savings. If you look at the monitor it takes up one sixth the space of a CRT. The second reason is reduced power consumption. When you look at a 15 inch flat panel monitor it consumes about 25 watts of power."
And that's more important than ever before. Bootcamp, I'm Fred Fishkin, Bloomberg Radio.