5th October 1998 Archive
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HP faces fine from US environment agency
EPA wants $2.5 million for not keeping it informed
The US Environmental Protection Agency is asking for a $2.5 million fine against Hewlett-Packard, which it says violated the Toxic Substances Control Act. HP's offence, says the EPA, was to fail to inform the Agency that it was manufacturing a chemical used in inkjet printer ink - the law requires that the EPA be kept informed …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 04:38
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Microsoft minions in bidding war to see Bill
They'll apparently pay up to $50,000 for some attention...
Microsoft employees are offering money for a chance to see Bill Gates and tour his palatial residence, apparently, and according to US reports the bidding topped $25,000 last week, with Microsoft confidently expecting the final winner to shell-out $50,000. These astonishing numbers are being racked-up in an auction being held as …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 04:40
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Intel sales badly dented by AMD upstarts
Loses share in retail market as Celeron fails to hit thespot
Intel efforts to beat-off low cost rivals seem to be failing, according to research outfit Computer Intelligence, which says the company's share of US retail sales in August was 54.3 per cent, down from 84.3 per cent a year ago. High-powered clone chips from AMD scored well over the month, and Intel's attempts to 'ring fence' …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 04:43
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Large throng joins industry Hall of Fame
Register retaliates by inducting Linus
In what cruel observers might describe as a desperate piece of self-promotion,* trade mag Computer Reseller News has inducted ten "computer industry visionaries" into the computer industry Hall of Fame. The inductions are apparently endorsed by the Boston Computer Museum. Those lucky winners still breathing will presumably be …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 06:04
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Hitachi to double 2.5in drive production
Brings forward ramp by a year
Hitachi is ramping-up production of 2.5in hard drives fast in response to soaring demand, according to today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun. This will constitute a welcome piece of good news for the company, which in common with other Asian giants has been hit badly by the semiconductor slump. Hitachi has been concentrating on boosting …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 06:06
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Nokia, Ericsson, Compaq, HP team to push broadband wireless
New trade body will throw its weight around in standards arena
European mobile phone suppliers Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens seem to be the ringleaders in a new trade body intended (ostensibly) to promote the European GSM standard at a global level. But informed sources suggest that the new body is effectively an alliance put together to help the companies and their allies steer the direction …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 06:08
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Roundup: UK markets on 2 October
London follows Wall Street with series of falls
There were some spectacular falls on the London market on Friday, which was reacting to overnight falls on Wall Street. The FTSE was off three per cent, but the technology sector suffered badly. The UK IT sector as a whole was down 14 per cent on the day. The main reason seems to be the weakness of banks and the fact that they …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 07:51
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Discount outfit sells sub-£100 Acorn NCs
Price breakthrough unlikely to be totally welcome
The £100 NC (that's around $160) has arrived - unfortunately, it's arrived in the shape of a close-out sale of Acorn-designed Netproducts Netstations. The machines have gone on sale via discount sales operation Morgan Computers, and seem to be surplus stock from Netchannel UK's abandonment of the ARM-based NC design. Prior to …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 07:53
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Morse puts IPO on backburner
Market conditions to blame
Morse Group, the leading UK Sun reseller, has blamed unfavourable market conditions for shelving its £600 million flotation plans this year, according to yesterday's Sunday Times. The company will attempt an IPO next year, the newspaper says. Morse has never announced publicly its intention to float, but the Sunday Times usually …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 09:35
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Roundup: US markets on 2 October
US stocks rise -- a bit
While the London market shivered on Friday, the Dow put on two per cent and Nasdaq closed marginally higher, up 2.65 points. PeopleSoft fell 25 per cent following Goldman Sachs' decision to reduce their recommendation from 'strong buy' to 'neutral'. It is only a month since we reported PeopleSoft's conference call with financial …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 10:07
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Japanese banking collapse threatens IT sector
Market dominoes on verge of toppling
The technology sector is in danger of a meltdown, starting from Tokyo. The Governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaru Hayami, told US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan on Saturday that the top 19 Japanese banks were severely under-capitalised -- to an extent greater than had been previously …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 10:15
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Spring cleans up its training portfolio
MBO team snaffle up franchise business
Spring Group PLC has tidied up its training portfolio with the £6 million disposal of its Pitman franchised businesse and The Training Corporation (Springs Sales Skills ) to an MBO team. Spring gets £2.4 million in cash and retains 19.9 per cent of the equity. It also retains £1.9 millin in cash that was in the balance sheet of …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 10:30
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Sun to buy remote access specialist
Move supports planned Sun.Net scheme
Sun is to buy remote access specialist i-Planet today, in a move intended to plug a hole in its Sun.Net scheme, which the company intends to roll out early next year. Sun.Net is intended to support single log-on access to corporate networks from diverse clients, anywhere in the world, giving users access via the Internet, i.e. ' …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 11:47
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Softbank buys Japanese broker for E+Trade
A licence, Stock Exchange membership and a loss-making history...
Softbank, the Japanese company that bought you Ziff-Davis publishing and Comdex, is to buy a Japanese brokerage to support its push into electronic stock trading. Earlier this year Softbank teamed up with E+Trade Group to found E+Trade in Japan. The Japanese E+Trade company, which is 58 per cent owned by Softbank, will operate …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 11:49
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Corel infected CDs recalled
I counted them all out -- and now I'm counting them all back...
A red-faced Corel has confirmed that a number of its recently released CorelDRAW 8.0 for Macintosh CD-ROMs also contained a virus. The company has initiated a recall programme to track down copies of the CD which made it out of the channel. Corel claims to have nailed most diseased discs before they reached customers. "We've …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 12:00
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HP to axe 2,500 jobs
Two per cent of workforce asked to take voluntary redundancy
Hewlett-Packard has begun the job-cutting programme chairman Lew Platt recently suggested might be used to help reduce the company's overall costs (see HP admits job cuts on the cards). The cuts will be implemented through a voluntary redundancies and will target 2,500 people, two per cent of HP's workforce. It has already …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 12:05
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Computacenter deal makes Ballmer super-excited
Mandelson applauds 1,000 new jobs
Computacenter announced this morning an alliance with Microsoft that will create 1,000 new jobs. Financial details of the alliance remain secret, but it's a nice deal for Computacenter, and not very good news for its competitors. Of the 1,000 new jobs, to be created over a three-year period, there will be 900 in the UK (half in …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 13:35
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Workers make cancer claims in NatSemi job cuts factory
Greenock sheds 700 staff
National Semiconductor is axe 700 jobs at its Greenock manufacturing plant, reducing the 1,500 workforce by almost half. Sources close to the company blamed the job cuts on this years semiconductor price drops: “Some of Natsemi products are going out at less than a penny,” said Sukh Rayat, general manager at Flashpoint UK , a …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 15:19
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Netscape signed up to provide BT with portal
Great Stan of phones teams up with Great Stan of browsers
British Telecom will this week sign a deal with Netscape to use the latter's software to provide a free email service and -- yes, you've guessed it -- an Internet portal. According to Sunday Business, BT's service will be called Talk21, and will be marketed toward Net users who connect from cybercafes, libraries and WebTV-style …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 15:31
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Feds probe Cisco ‘Yalta’ conference
Did Big Three plan to share out network market?
The Federal Trade Commission has begun an investigation into allegations that Cisco attempted to persuade Lucent and Nortel to share out the network market between the three of them. According to today's Washington Post, the FTC has written to Cisco demanding details about talks held this summer between the three companies, …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 16:13
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Intel antitrust suit delayed
Great Stan of chips gets a month's reprieve from FTC allegations
The Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust suit against Intel has been postponed again, this time by a further month. The action will now commence on 18 February 1999. The move was made by the presiding judge, James Timoney, the better to fit his undoubtedly busy schedule. The judge had already set the trial for 5 January. The …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 16:24
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King joins DTEC Memory Corp as "hired hand"
Memory Corp targets $500m sales
Datrontech founder Steve King is putting his weight behind the company’s new JV with Memory Corp by coming on board as “a hired hand”. King is to work out of Datrontech Hong Kong, where he will explore far eastern routes to market for Memory Corp’s proprietary memory technology. He is convinced that Dtec Memory Corp is a world …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 16:39
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Windows 98 to get Service Pack – official
Big bugs due to be fixed early 1999
Microsoft has confirmed it will ship an upgrade to Windows 98 early next year -- over six months after the OS was originally released. Since that time, Windows 98 users have consistently slammed the product for a wide range of bugs and problems. Some vendors have even offered the OS alongside its predecessor, allowing users to …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 16:43
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Phone meltdown blights comms conference
Keep me hanging on the telephone
The TMA conference had to live without phones this morning as exhibitors complained of a phone system meltdown in Brighton. The breakdown in communications was a result of over demand on both land and mobile networks. "We tried to get a fax through all morning," said Maurice Jones, managing director of C3 Computer Telephony."But …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 21:44
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Y2K means NT 5.0 will have to wait its turn
TMA delegates complain of poor timing
IT managers look set to put Windows NT 5.0 rollouts onto the backburner, while they sort out Y2K problems. Nex- year;s timing of the much delayed launch of NT5 was criticised today by attendees at the TMA conference in Brighton. "We won't be advising our customers to upgrade to NT 5.0 until after the Year 2000 crisis is over," …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 21:52
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Voice, data and ne'er the twain shall meet
Do believe the hype
Forget the hype, voice and data convergence is a little more than a pipe dream for most big UK businesses. A GlobalOne survey of the UK's top 200 businesses revealed that 46 per cent had no data and telephony convergence. This figure is expected to drop by 35 per cent in the next two years. Of the 54 per cent who said there was …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 22:14
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Register's analysis of Intel Basic PC flaws is flawed, apparently
Audio and DVD no problem, a reader writes
Reader Eric Pobirs writes: There are a number of flaws in The Register analysis of Intel's future roadmap for basic PCs. Audio and DVD will not be a problem. I've observed SoftDVD playback in Windows of amazing quality on 350MHz PII systems that did not have motion compensation on their video cards. Motion compensation is …
Business 5 Oct 1998, 22:31
