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17th November 1998 Archive

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  • Oracle Raw Iron plan shuts NT out of the enterprise

    Fast, commodity Oracle Intel boxes to tempt PC manufacturers away from Microsoft

    Oracle CEO Larry Ellison yesterday moved to short Windows NT out of the equation with the announcement of 'Raw Iron,' a project designed to run Oracle 8i directly on the hardware without the intervention of anything more than a kernel. Raw Iron is to ship by next March, and although he indicated over the weekend (Earlier Story) …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 09:00

  • E-Commerce made easy with IBM

    Come on, it's made out of wood, isn't it?

    Browsing the ThinkPad options area of the IBM site in search of some expansion for a 600, we spot Model 05K5336, a handy adaptor unit for shoving a second hard drive in the CD/floppy expansion bit. Excited, we read on: "Features & Benefits: - Feature Benefit information not available on this product." Hard sell, eh? Never mind, …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 09:04

  • A year ago: Cyrix becomes Fin Fin couch potato

    Company also intros cheap reference platform

    Just inside the entrance of the convention centre, Cyrix was staging a funny little game at its booth, which seemed to consist of little chips dressed as American football players rushing around a field and scoring. But surrounding this booth, there was plenty more which was far more interesting than the ballyhoo-hoo there. …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 11:00

  • Compaq wakes up to portal potential

    AltaVista to climb up net charts, it claims

    Compaq wants AltaVista to become one of the top five portal sites on the internet after it announced it would "aggressively promote" the search engine. Currently languishing in tenth place behind the likes of Yahoo!, AOL and Excite Compaq's decision to back AltaVista - which it acquired as part of the Digital take-over earlier …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 11:29

  • CWC in eCHARGE for online payment

    Sounds great, but will it work?

    Paying for low-cost items on the internet could be made as simple as settling your phone bill if a scheme launched yesterday by Cable & Wireless and Seattle-based eCHARGE catches on in the UK. The micropayment system means that users don't have to release credit card details to purchase low cost items or services such as news …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 11:32

  • 3Dfx announces next-generation Voodoo

    New chipset offers fourfold increase on Voodoo2 performance, claims developer

    3Dfx has unveiled the latest iteration of its Voodoo 3D graphics acceleration family, Voodoo3. The Voodoo3 chipset offers around twice the performance of two Voodoo2 boards running in parallel, 3Dfx claimed -- effectively four times the performance of a single Voodoo2 chipset. In statistical terms, it can generate seven million …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 11:48

  • Asda enters sub-£500 fray

    Slams other retailers for putting margin first

    Asda has entered the PC market with a sub £500 computer from Merseyside-based Future Solutions. ASDA blamed PC retailers for traditionally putting their own profit margins above giving customers the best deal. The pilot scheme, in association with Memsolve, means the supermarket giant will sell fully equipped internet-ready …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 11:51

  • Microsoft to offer free microbrowser as ‘stop Symbian’ campaign

    Free 'open' browser, free source code, free licence... Holy Linux, Batman!

    Having failed so far to get mobile phone companies to vote for CE in any significant numbers, Microsoft is now readying an alternative strategy - offer them a microbrowser free of charge for their handsets and devices. The W-Pack (Wireless Package Application) programme will include free microbrowser, source code, libraries and …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 11:55

  • Updated: AMD K6-2s crash with Win95

    But Microsoft makes software patch hard, some might say impossible, to find

    AMD has blamed Microsoft for a software problem affecting PCs using its K6-2 350MHz or faster chips which means machines hang and need re-booting. The problem, which only affects machines running Windows 95, can be fixed by a software patch but end users cannot obtain that from AMD. Instead, according to Rana Mainee, AMD's …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 12:15

  • Enta enters new distie agreement

    Appointment first of many says Auratek

    Auratek Europe Ltd has appointed Shropshire-based Enta Technologies Ltd to market the full range of multimedia products from Aztech Systems. The announcement by Auratek is its first after winning the contract to supply Aztech products in the UK. The company confirmed it was in negotiation with other resellers and hopes to make …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 12:20

  • Microsoft ClearType reinvents the anti-aliased text wheel

    Been there, seen it, done it, bought T-shirt, says Adobe

    Microsoft has invented system-wide anti-aliased text -- again. Adobe was the first company to invent anti-aliased text, back in the mid-80s when it released the first version of Display PostScript. It invented it once more with Adobe Type Manager (ATM), often harshly dubbed Adobe Type Mangler by users. In the early 90s, Acorn …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 12:33

  • What if Gates loses? – A treacherous WSJ considers

    Even Microsoft's supporters are starting to think the unthinkable

    Just over a year ago Bill Gates wrote in the pages of the Wall Street Journal in defence of "innovation," and in the intervening period the WSJ has been one of the stauncher defenders of Gates and his company. But this morning the paper says: "The way things are headed now in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial, the government …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 12:38

  • Kyocera posts profit drop

    It's a 33 per cent downer

    Japanese giant Kyocera, which had previously weathered the Asian economic typhoons, said that its profits fell for the first half of its financial year to 30 September. According to the company, the drop was due to lack of demand for its IC packaging and also its personal phone systems. The company posted a net profit of ¥16.6 …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 12:39

  • Energis strikes deal with Mitel

    Posts larger turnover for half year

    Energis posted its interim half year results to the 30th of September. Turnover rose by 76 per cent to £121 million, with profits of of £19.4 million before tax, depreciation and amortisaton. Earnings before interest and tax halved to £10.5 million while its pre-tax loss was halved to £16.1 million. New customers gained in the …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 12:42

  • IP to displace ATM, says Nortel VP

    Real men will use routers; ATM just for WAN cores

    Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is (almost) dead, long live IP routing, was the (almost) inspiring rallying cry of Nortel technology VP Daniel Pitt's speech at Internet conference iBand yesterday. Pitt's premise is this: next year packet routing will reach the speed of optical networking systems sometime next year. The driving …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 13:05

  • Little money for Eastern Europe, says Intel

    Fabulous dreams empty for Balts

    Intel has denied it will spend money in Eastern Europe to build an additional fab. That follows a story in today's Financial Times saying that the chip behemoth was looking at building a fab in either the Czech Republic or the independent Baltic states. An Intel representative today told The Register the company had no such …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 15:08

  • Court argues over validity of browser integration

    The DoJ may be moving up a blind alley in trying to separate browser and OS

    Glenn Weadock, President of Independent Software of Golden, Colorado, was given the expected rough time in cross-examination by attorney Richard C Pepperman II for Microsoft. The initial focus was on trying to discredit Weadock by suggesting, for example, that he had insufficient technical knowledge to give meaningful opinions. …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 15:19

  • Mobile Celeron will arrive at January end

    Watch the notebook prices fall

    Great Beast Intel is shipping completed samples of its Celeron mobile processor, embedded in notebooks. As reported here earlier from the Intel Developer Forum, Intel is developing a Celeron mobile processor. Now sources close to the company tell The Register that the product, codenamed Dixon, will ship towards the end of …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 15:22

  • Ascend unveils telco-oriented data gateway…

    ...and readies sale of unwanted Stratus units

    Ascend has announced a device that the company claims makes it easier for phone companies to handle data traffic. The telecoms specialist has also said it is close to finding buyers for the unwanted divisions of Stratus, which it bought earlier this year for $822 million. Stratus also played a part in the development of the SS-7 …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 15:34

  • HP has little financial sauce

    Hard to get that juice out of the bottle

    Hewlett Packard has cautioned that slow sales may lie ahead after seeing its fourth quarter profit fall by 12 per cent. The California-based vendor posted net income of $710 million for the period ended October 31, down on $806 million a year earlier. Turnover was up just 4 per cent to $12 billion, with European sales jumping 15 …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 15:38

  • Freeserve spells end of AOL's UK supremacy

    And tomorrow Carphone Warehouse has say. Tiffin time.

    By around teatime tomorrow AOL will no longer be the most popular internet service provider in the UK. With only 500,000 subscribers to its name, it will be overtaken by the Dixons' Freeserve service which has notched up more than 475,000 accounts in the eight weeks since it was launched. With around 8,500 new accounts being …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 15:38

  • Amazon unveils video retail site

    But Buy.com wants a piece of its action

    Amazon.com has begun selling videos, as predicted. The new service offers 60,000 videos and 2000 DVD titles to its US customers, the company said. However, the service hasn't been rolled out in the UK -- in fact, Amazon.co.uk has yet to offer music CDs, which its US parent has been selling since July. Amazon.com also opened a …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 16:09

  • Ex-Datrontech top salesman to flog girlfriend gift

    Raffles Harley Heritage Springer at Making Markets launch

    Internet company Making Markets is raffling off its very own managing director’s Harley Davidson in a bid to gain reseller subscriptions. The London-based company is run by former Datrontech PC components business manager - and the channel’s very own Santa - George Evans. Evans aims to get every reseller in the country using the …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 16:57

  • Gates video 'not a beautiful thing to watch,' says Microsoft brief

    Here we go again - the whole transcript of yesterday's very strange Gates testimony

    Even Microsoft legal advisor Joseph di Genova, previously a DC attorney general, had to admit that the third Gates videotape extracts to be shown in court yesterday in Washington was "not a beautiful thing to watch". Indeed it wasn't. Di Genova wasn't allowed to say much more as his utterances are not exactly helping Microsoft's …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 17:14

  • Red Hat unveils channel product, support and authorisation plans

    But are dealer programmes and support products enough to push Linux into the mainstream?

    Red Hat has released two new Linux packages aimed at more mainstream users than the Unix-derivative has so far attracted, plus new channel programmes to back the products. Red Hat Linux 5.2 System Builder Edition is aimed at resellers delivering Linux-based enterprise server solutions. It also forms the basis for the Commercial …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 17:29

  • Are Linux fans Borgs? Go figure…

    The difference is not much...

    Linux community tarred with Borg stamp The Linux collective is a powerful civilisation of enhanced humanoids from the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. The Linux collective implant themselves with cybernetic devices, giving them great technological and combat capabilities. Different Linux collective members are equipped with …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 17:29

  • Comdex: Sony's dog woofs in GSM mode

    Dog even falls over -- obviously beating Koreans

    Bizarrest demo at Comdex? Sony showed what it described as a 'pet-type prototype' - a life-like mechanical dog which does virtually everything the genuine article does except poop. It does have a serious side too - since it could potentially call you up via an internal cellular phone and inform you the house is on fire. The dog …

    Business 17 Nov 1998, 21:45