Minneapolis-made Zeos personal computers, one of the best-known PC brands to originate in the heady high-growth market of the late 1980s, will be discontinued by the brand's new owner, Idaho-based Micron Elec-tronics Inc.
Micron said the future of about 500 workers at the former Zeos International plant in Minneapolis is under review. The company continues to manufacture and sell Zeos PCs, and it hasn't set a firm date for discontinuing them.The disclosure comes in the same week that the Zeos line was cited as one of the worst on the market in a consumer survey published in the March issue of PC World magazine, based in San Francisco. The survey named Zeos as one of the worst in overall quality and service and among the poorest in reliability.
Among the survey's findings were that only a little more than half of Zeos customers responding to the survey said they would buy another Zeos computer. About half of all those responding to the survey said they had had hardware problems with their Zeos computers. Zeos owners also said that, on average, it took more than 40 hours to get technical assistance via a telephone help line when they had trouble with their PCs.
The PC World survey was considerably kinder to Micron's own PC brand, which was rated good in overall quality and service and among the best in reliability. Some Micron PCs are manufactured at the same Minneapolis plant as the Zeos line.
The survey was based on 17,800 PC owners who responded last May to November by mailing in survey forms found in PC World.
Steve Laney, director of investor relations at Micron Electronics, based in Nampa, Idaho, said the firm was unaware of the PC World survey and had had no indication from Zeos customers that they were dissatisfied with their PCs.
Laney said Micron decided to drop the Zeos line as part of a move to eliminate competition between the Zeos and Micron PC brands and to standardize on a single PC design with common components.
Micron Electronics is a public company formed last April by the merger of Minneapolis-based Zeos International and two subsidiaries of Idaho-based computer chip maker Micron Technology. At the time the stock merger was announced in late 1994, it was valued at $44.5 million.