Computer Warehouse boss sees big Mac OS sales

Jonathan Cole, chairman of Computer Warehouse, the UK's largest Mac reseller, said his firm had sold 500 UK-built Mac clones under its own brand in the first two months of offering the product, and expects to sell 6-8,000 systems in the next 12 months.

"We reached our first quarterly target in our first month," said Cole, who has taken the 10-year-old company to a 93-staff, £25 million company. "Licensing is one of the most successful things Apple has done. It's kept certain territories alive for Apple. We sell direct a 200MHz PowerPC 604e system with 64Mb RAM, 3.8Gb hard drive, [Iomega] Zip drive, miro DC20 video capture card, Adobe Premiere Lite and M-tropolis multimedia authoring software for £1,999. That would be £3,000 from Apple. There's a massive installed base; the Mac is still the prime machine in graphics and publishing."

Cole also plans to shortly announce plans to sell machiines based on the Be OS that was a purchase target for Apple until it bought Next.

Computer Warehouse can be contacted by telephone on 0171-7244104