HP integrates colour photo scanner

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has previewed its first PC for the Hong Kong home market, loading it with the latest Intel Pentium MMX microprocessor, an impressive graphics and memory subsystem to handle large image files and an internal colour photo scanner.

The worldwide manager for HP's Pavilion PC division, Richard Walker, deflected criticism that HP had been slow to introduce the Pavilion in Asia by explaining the desktop space constraints home users faced, notably in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

The high-end Pavilion PC, built to showcase Intel's MMX (multimedia extension) technology, has a colour photo scanner - a device that would normally take up valuable desk space if selected as a companion peripheral device.

'You can't take the attitude that as a US company we should be able to sell the same PC in Asia as we do to the American market,' Mr Walker said.

'Not everybody lives in a home the same size as an average house in California. We have to take that into account when we design something.' The compact result conveniently met HP's product guidelines for the company-wide target to become the world's leader in digital imaging, he said.

Clement Yau, HP's Hong Kong-based business development manager for the Pavilion PC, said the pre-bundled imaging software with the Pavilion was among the first 10 software applications written to take advantage of Intel's MMX instruction set, designed to boost the performance of sound, video and graphics on a PC.

There is a software overlay for Windows 95, which personalises the software interface for each user.