At the press conference, which was attended by Newsbytes in the TenT at Lincoln Center, officials said the new models are aimed at helping Compaq to regain its lead in the US PC notebook market.

"In talking with customers, resellers, and analysts, it has become very clear that we need to extend Compaq's reach in portables," said Michael Winkler, Compaq's senior vice president and general manager. "Frankly, in the past we've been largely absent from some important pieces of the market," he added.

"Admittedly, we took our eye off the ball and we dropped from number one in 1993, to a solid number 2 in 1994, to a virtual three-way tie for second place in 1995 worldwide," he acknowledged.

But Compaq also has "some tremendous pluses," according to Winkler. "In fact, a major reason why I came to this company was its unparalleled brand strength and its broad offerings in servers, desktops, and portables," he told the press.

To embark on a market turnaround, he maintained, Compaq combined its own research with that of third-parties. Results showed that notebook users are looking for three distinct sets of traits -notebooks that offer the equivalent of desktop capabilities, "value-oriented systems," and machines with "the greatest possible mobility and flexibility."

The new Armada 4100 is designed to meet the needs of users seeking desktop replacement models, Winkler said, while the new Armada 1100, priced starting at $1,899, is intended as a "value-oriented system." The LTE 5000, on the other hand, is "the ultimate power tool," according to Winkler.

The new Armada and LTE models will be promoted starting today on Compaq's Internet World Wide Web site, at http://www.compaq.com/ , reported Jim Garrity, Compaq Vice President of Corporate Communications. "Without getting too specific, you'll be seeing two more announcements from us this year," Garrity revealed.

In a series of demonstrations in the TenT at Lincoln Center, Newsbytes saw how a "road warrior" might use the Armada 4100 from a hotel room, and how a telecommuter might employ the Armada 1100 right from the kitchen table. Both members of Compaq's new Armada "sub-brand" offer features like "optical track-balls" for easier cleaning, and an optional Speed-Paq 288 Telephony Modem PC Card for 28.8 megabits-per-second (Mbps) cellular communications, said a Compaq executive. Other features of the 4100 include software MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group), zoomed video, NTSC (North American Television Standards Committee)-PAL (the European video standard) video output, a one gigabyte (GB) or 810 megabyte (MB) hard drive, 8MB or 16MB standard RAM, two Type II or one type III PC Card slot, and an infrared port. The 1.5-inch thick unit weighs 5 to 6 pounds. Users can select from a 133 megahertz (MHz), 120MHz, or 100MHz Pentium processor.

The Armada 1100 provides the same full-sized keyboard as the high-end 4100, reported another Compaq exec. Additional features of the 1100 include a 10.4-inch active- or passive-matrix color display. A 100MHz Pentium processor and an 810 MB hard drive are standard.

The new LTE 5250 and LTE 5150 are the first notebooks to offer the same "Intelligent Manageability" features as Compaq's desktop and server families, according to the officials. In another demo, two Compaq representatives used a new LTE notebook and a Compaq desktop PC, each equipped with Intelligent Manageability, to perform mock "network management" at the press conference. Intelligent management capabilities features include asset management, fault management, and special security features designed to help protect data from unauthorized access.

In a meeting with Newsbytes at the close of the press conference, Tom G. Bunch, Vice President of the performance portables business unit, said that Compaq's top competitors in the notebook industry include Toshiba, IBM, NEC, and Apple. Compaq's new notebook strategy, he added, is aimed at helping Compaq to expand beyond the high-end enterprise market into the small-to-mid sized business arena. Compaq is pursuing these goals by adding emphasis on the retail channel, lower pricing, and all five of the major geographic areas of the world, Bunch told Newsbytes.

(Jacqueline Emigh/19960617/Reader Contact: Compaq Computer Corp., 800-OK-COMPAQ. Press Contacts: Compaq, 713-514-0484, Miller Shandwick Technologies for Compaq, 617-536-0470)