This is not going to necessarily be of very good cheer to those people who have 5800 series which freeze up, as exclusively revealed here early last week, but we now have obtained further details of the 7000 Presario series which will replace the systems. Compaq had been deluged by individuals who bought Presario 5800s and encountered persistent and annoying freezes which could only be fixed by pulling the power on the machines. The problems, for many, still persist, although Compaq has got so-called SoftPaq's for machines which use the AMD chip. Here is the complete information, with prices, on the Compaq 7xxx Presario series which it will release shortly. Intel does not support the Firewire 1394 standard, and instead plumps for USB, but the Athlon machines Compaq will release do have such support. The 7360 K6-II 500Mhz/64 MB RAM/10GB HD/40X CD/8MB Video RAM with Shared Video Memory and two USB ports will cost $800. The 7470 K6-II 533Mhz/64MB RAM/20GB HD/CDRW/with 8 MB Video RAM and four shared USB ports and Quickcam will cost $1,000. The 7478 K6II- 533MHz/64 RAM/30 GB/DVD/CDRW/8 MB Shared/4 USB ports/Quickcam will cost $1,300. The 7588 with a Pentium III 550MHz chip/128 RAM/30 GB/40 X/CDRW/8 MB Shared/4 USB ports/Quickcam will cost $1,600 The 7940 with an Athlon K7 600MHz chip/128 RAM/30 GB/DVD andCDRW/16 MB VRAM/4 USB ports/Quickcam/and two Firewire 1394 ports will cost $1,800. The 7970 Athlon K7 with a 700MHz chip /128 RAM/40 GB/DVD and CDRW/16 MB RAM/4 USB ports/Quickcam/and 2 1394 ports will cost $2,100 In other news from Compaq, the company will shortly introduce a series of laptops and will change its numbering system from four digits to a new system which will use a somewhat confusing four digits, two letters and three digits, for example 1200XL106. We have heard back from Q Central in the US. The spin department there, which commented to several news wires which "followed up" our original story, said they had never heard of The Register. Considering that we managed to get a Mr Jim Boak, director of Compaq's corporate technical strategy to write to us in person when we scooped the world on the company dropping NT for Alpha last August, we find this a little surprising. Thanks to our colleagues Infoworld, ZD and Cnet for following up on our original story. ® See also New PCs emerge from Compaq glacier Frozen Presarios found in Compaq support glacier