You used to see nothing but servers and desktops. What s more, government program executives at several distributors said the strongest growth appears to be taking place at the higher end of the spectrum. Desktop Alternative Jay Lambke, director of government and education field sales for Ingram Micro, attributes the rising requirements to the fact that laptops often used in conjunction with docking stations are gradually elbowing aside desktop PCs in many government offices. Increasingly, agencies are reconsidering the notion that workers need a desktop for the office and a notebook for the road. A couple of years ago, I would have said that commercial uses a lot more laptops and buys higher quality.
Government is much more like commercial in the quality of the product that they re buying.
Top Brands Kelly Ross, director of Pinacor s government program, estimates that public-sector purchases accounted for about 10 percent of the mobile computers sold by his organization this year. He expects that share to grow to at least 15 percent in 1999. Like most other distributors interviewed for this article, Ross said the bulk of Pinacor s government customers tend to stick with well-established, major brands. But our premier brands are still the main names in the industry. Toshiba, Compaq and IBM are strong players in that area, and they comprise a majority of our sales in that market.