MICROSOFT TO PUSH FOR INTEGRATED PC.

Byline: John Markoff The New York Times

Microsoft Corp., trying to maintain its dominance over computing standards, is about to mount a counterattack on the industry's quest for a $500 Internet computer.

Contending that high performance, not low price, should be the priority, Microsoft will describe its vision Monday: a device that might represent a grand fusion between the Internet and the electric appliances that now populate the American home, including the television, stereo, videocassette recorder and personal computer.

The initiative, to be known as the Simply Interactive Personal Computer, or SIPC, will have the support of a number of consumer electronics and personal computer makers, including Toshiba Corp. and Gateway 2000.

The push by Microsoft comes as the growth rate of the existing home-computer market has begun to slow and PC makers try to find new opportunities. Many people in the computer industry have called for a new class of low-cost machines designed principally to retrieve information over the Internet.

Besides a growing consumer interest in going on-line, consumers will get their first taste later this year of a new high-capacity, information-storage medium known as the digital video disk, or DVD.