An iball for seven cities

The Best is launching its iball notebook under the 'i' range of
pro-ducts. Slated to be available in about three weeks the new notebook is
priced in the range of Rs 45,000-Rs 50,000. The configuration of these
note-books would vary from Intel's Celeron to Pentium IV and 14.1 to 15.1 inch
monitor. The rest of the notepad would comprise 40GB HDD, 128 MB and CDR or
combo drives.

The low cost notebook segment in India is crowded today with MNC and Indian
brands but that does not impact plans of Mumbai-based The Best in any way.
"The mar-ket is definitely getting crow-ded but these manufacturers have
their limitations. MNCs and Indian notebook vendors operate in their respective
channels and in-variably do not reach to the large assembling market. Now these
system builders can sell a notebook as a value addition to their existing
business," said Sandeep Parasrampuria, dire-ctor of the company.

He added that the product is being launched only after conducting trial tests
which are on from the last three quarters. Battery life is a critical compo-nent
in note-books there-fore we have smart power technology where three-hour backup
time will be provided compared to 1.5-2 hour given by the competition. "We
are also planning to add accessories such as card reader in the notebook,"
said Parasrampuria.

In the first phase, the 'i' ball notebook will be available in about
seven major cities and in the following two months it will be expanded to 10.
Local warranty will be provided at all of its 15 offices.

The Best will also be launching its pendrive called iball pendrive in three
capa-cities, which are mainly 128MB, 256MB and 512MB. The starting price for
this pendrive would be Rs 1,500. The vendor also plans to re-launch its UPS
range of product with an aggressive marketing plan.

Nancy Sudheer

Mumbai