Company chairman Raj Saraf told reporters in the city on Friday that the i-PC will be offered with pre-paid 100 hours TCP/TP Internet account, VSNL automatic dialer, in-built 3Com/US Ronotics 56 kbps, V.90 fax-modem, easy access Internet keyboard and Zenith instant weblink CD containing Internet tutorial, thousands of URLs/weblinks and software.

"Zenith i-PC is even one up on Apple's recently announced i-Mac in terms of prepaid Internet account, 1.44 MB FDD, the Zenith instant weblink CD and will be affordable to the average consumer," he added.

He said that Zenith proposes to produce 10,000 i-Pcs by next year. The product allows access to Internet on the click of the mouse on installation and does away with the formalities of obtaining a VSNL Internet account. "VSNL's present infrastructure will definitely help us," Saraf said, adding that his company would enter into an agreement with the department of telecommunications (DoT) within two weeks to extend VSNL's connectivity to various other cities.

VSNL chief general manager Hardev Singh said this has been made possible by an agreement with Zenith that provides bulk Internet account and provision of auto dialer by VSNL.

"With i-PC, there is no more waiting for Internet account allotment," Saraf said. He added that although the Internet service providers' policy has been announced, it will take at least a year to create the necessary infrastructure.

Zenith had received an offer from three ISPs for tieups but had not accepted the proposal. Vice-pressident Shrikant Joshi said that instant weblink CD provided with every Zenith i-PC has been customised for the buyer. It offers a step-by-step Internet primer in the multimedia presentation format and also gives novel tools and techniques to simplify the Internet usage.

He said that voice-e-mail enables a user to transfer a wave file as an attachment to an e-mail and does away with the mundane typing. It provides an automatic authentication of the sender and and to facilitate this, i-PC comes along with a speaker headphone and microphone.