8th September 1998 Archive

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Moore advocates pain for gain

Visionary jumps the Genunga Gap

Geoffrey Moore, chairman of consultants The Chasm Group and well-known author of Crossing the chasm -- which became the little red book of Silicon Valley --spoke to an overflow audience at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris. His theme was marketing and selling high-tech products to mainstream customers. The "chasm" is the gap …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 07:31
AMD prices slashed by Danish firm

One off prices well below trade prices

A Danish firm which sells computer kit on the World Wide Web has undercut the channel and OEM price for K6-II 350MHz parts. The company, Bluecom, today sent out an email to its customers quoting a price of $239.50 for the part. AMD's official price, in quantities of 1000, is $317, a representative said today. The company is also …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 09:23
IBM Micro to get big wedge from NatSemi

Money will sever contract to fab Cyrix chips

National Semiconductor is to pay a large amount of money to IBM Microelectonics to sever the contract to fab its 6x68 chips, according to reliable sources close to the company. NatSemi-Cyrix will hand over a figure in the region of $40 million, according to the source. That will mean that IBM Micro will, effectively, stop …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 09:34
HP's Lew lays down Lew's Laws

Head of HP badly, madly mangles English language

The five rules of Lew's Law were elaborated by the eponymous Lewis Platt, Chairman of HP, at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris. His first rule was that people should "choose smart" -- or to put it another way, eat or be eaten. He described how the electronic graveyard of equipment had come from obsolete or failed products, and …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 11:29
Microsoft planning licence fee hike

Company plans progressive elimination of BackOffice concurrent licences

The 'review' of licensing policies Microsoft said it was undertaking last week (see separate story) is going to cost customers a bundle, according to a forthcoming Gartner Group study. At Citrix's Thinergy conference in Florida Microsoft came under considerable fire over its refusal to countenance concurrent licensing deals for …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 12:09
Vodafone rumoured stalking Airtouch

But despite the advantages, full merger could be tricky

Shares in UK-based cellular company Vodafone rose sharply yesterday following weekend rumours of a tie-up with US company Airtouch. According to The Observer newspaper Vodafone is considering leveraging its $23 billion stock value into a $40 billion merger with the company that claims to be the world's largest cellular provider …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 12:17
Plustek bounds over HP in the scanner market

Market dictated by retail sales

Plustek leapt into first place in the flatbed scanner market in the UK in July, according to market research company Romtec. Romtec, which monitors indirect sales, said that in July Plustek had beaten HP into first place, with a 43 per cent market share compared to 15 per cent. In third place is Umax with 12 per cent market …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 12:29
CA scores top marks in enterprise management

Easily ahead of pack, says IDC

Computer Associates is claiming leadership in the enterprise management software market following the release of two IDC reports showing it way ahead of IBM in revenues. According to System Management Software: 1998 Worldwide Markets And Trends, CA has 25.3 per cent of the global system management software market and revenues of …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 13:00
Acer pulls plugs on Siemens PC deal

Plant and German company's PC strategy fall under cloud

Siemens outsourcing plans for its PC business came under a cloud today, as Acer pulled the plugs on a deal to buy the German company's Augsburg PC manufacturing plant. The two companies agreed in April that Siemens would turn over most of its PC manufacturing to Acer, and that Acer would centre its European development and …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 13:03
Microsoft plugs new Internet Explorer security leak

Stops sneaky Webmasters snooping your hard disk

Microsoft has released a patch for Internet Explorer 4 which is designed to seal a security breach that could allow unscrupulous Web site hosts and hackers to read files on a user's hard drive. The so-called Cross-frame Navigate bug effectively allows developers to code pages that will display files on the user's computer. The …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 13:10
Franklin readies Rex Pro

More features for pint-sized PDA

Electronic phrasebook and dictionary specialist Franklin is expanding its Rex range of PC Card-sized PDAs with a new Pro model. The Rex Pro contains 512KB of memory, twice that of the standard Rex. In addition to the Rex's standard address book, calendar, to-do lists and memo utilities, Rex Pro ships with Starfish's TrueSync PIM …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 13:27
Koch unveils channel initiatives

Web site and newsletter to keep dealers up to date

Consumer software distributor Koch Media has begun a major channel support initiative. The scheme involves keeping dealers up to date through the Web, a dedicated newsletter and an on-the-road sales team. Koch's Web presence covers all of the company's European operations, and contains a section dedicated to the UK. In addition …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 13:30
Spam ensnares with ersatz endorsements

It worked for us (not)

Spammers have taken to faking endorsements from leading US financial publications in their latest attempts to hoodwink Internet users into parting with their hard-earned cash. Beverley Hills, California-based junk emailer Diamond International, which runs an operation called the World Currency Cartel, claimed the Wall Street …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 13:33
Boffins improve GPS to half a centimetre accuracy

Applications will be legion

Boffins in the UK have succeeded in refining global positioning satellite (GPS) technology so that it can locate positions to within half a centimetre. A report in today's The London Evening Standard said that scientists have used mathematical formulae to refine GPS, allowing it to be used to monitor micro-movements. The …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 14:01
Acorn wins turnkey TV-over-copper deal

Canadian outfit to sell complete solution to telcos

Acorn is to provide the set-top box hardware for a broadcast TV over phone wire system being sold by Canadian software company ImagicTV. Imagic is an affiliate of Newbridge Networks and the New Brunswick Telephone Company, and specialises in the development of technology that allows service providers to deliver digital broadcast …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 14:11
Fujitsu and Orckit to supply Deutsche Telekom ADSL

Two year country-wide deployment in the offing

Fujitsu and Orckit Communications have won a deal to supply Deutsche Telekom's projected country-wide ADSL network, the companies announced today. Deutsche Telekom will initially deploy in eight German cities, Bonn, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart, and has agreed to deploy a minimum of 35, …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 14:13
Dial with your boots on

intro

Life on the road is hard, thanks to these here global dial-up services. A few weeks back The Register found itself logged-off in France on the grounds that The Microsoft Network had thoughtfully blocked spammers and, er, all of the users who dialed into MSN via other ISPs. Call to tech support to get the details of the new mail …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 14:20
Fujitsu puts iron into FeRAM

Speeds up capacity

Fujitsu has claimed that it has managed to increase the capacity of ferro-electric RAMs (FeRAMs), according to Japanese reports. That follows a similar claim from Hyundai towards the end of last week, reported here. The reports said that FeRAMs, which will eventually displace DRAMs, will reach up to one Mbit. The technology is …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 14:42
HP beefs up storage offerings

Company prepares cluster strategy

Hewlett Packard has expanded its storage line, introducing backup management software, back up hardware, and details of its fibre channel storage strategy. The news comes shortly before HP releases its digital linear tape (DLT) technology early next month. HP products will now support Microsoft clustering services for Windows NT …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 15:17
Oracle jumps into bed with Linux resellers

Worldwide deal strengthens OS case

Oracle has signed marketing and technology partnerships with four Linux resellers and application developers -- Red Hat Software, VA Research in the US, Pacific HiTech in Japan, and US/European operation SuSE. "The response to our recent decision to support Linux [in the forthcoming Oracle 8] was a collective sigh of relief from …

Business 8 Sep 1998, 16:26