San Diego County libraries get first of 100 new PCs

The Pennant Alliance, a group of four technology vendors that was awarded

a $644 million information technology outsourcing contract in San Diego

County in October, earlier this week provided the first of 100 new PCs at

two county libraries.

The first of the 100 Dell 500 MHz Pentium III computers were installed

at the libraries in La Mesa and Encinitas, Calif. The new equipment will

complement 54 PCs that will be made available from the Gates Foundation

and another 10 that will be installed as part of the computer refresh stipulations

in the Pennant Alliance contract.

The PCs include high-speed Internet browsers and data cabling to prepare

the libraries for a new county communications network that should be completed

in January 2001.

Computer Sciences Corp. is the lead company among the vendors and partnered

with SAIC, Pacific Bell and Lucent Technologies to form the alliance.