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13th January 1999 Archive

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  • Judge reserves rights to unseal MS pricing data

    Perhaps he's considering exposure as one of the possible remedies?

    The transcript of Monday's trial session shows that just 33 pages of testimony were heard in camera - not, in fact, very much. It appears that the judge will be studying the exhibits later, as it was hardly possible to consider each one in the time in closed session. A consortium of media put the argument that as little as …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 10:39

  • MS pricing strategy exposed – cheap when there's competition, but…

    Prices can go up as well as down, depending on competition...

    We thought we would take a trip along memory lane to show that the truth is somewhat different, and that Microsoft uses price competition to freeze out competitors to its monopoly. In 1981-1982, MS-DOS was priced at about $2-$5, to establish market share. By 1988, the price had become $25-$28, in contrast to price trends for …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 10:41

  • Squaddies to make up IT skills shortfall

    Booting up takes on completely new meaning

    GIs who have had enough of razor sharp haircuts and square bashing are being offered the chance to retrain for a new career in IT by networking giant Cisco Systems. Instead of marching off into civvy street to fend for themselves, Cisco is offering high-tech training to demob-happy military personnel leaving the services to …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 11:06

  • Top chip companies took major hit in 98

    A couple of them held the line, but the Far East went South. As it were...

    Only six of the top 20 semiconductor companies showed revenue growth in 1998, according to Dataquest’s preliminary rankings for the year. Intel was top dog with revenues of $22.6 billion, but even The Mighty Satan could only achieve 4.3 per cent year-on-year growth. The other winners were Philips, Siemens and STMicroelectronics …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 11:08

  • Motorola licenses Citrix for wireless apps

    For some US packet radio system first, but the deal looks more promising in the longer term

    Motorola is to embed Citrix’s ICA client in its wireless handsets and smartphones following a licence agreement with the thin client company. Initially Motorola intends to use ICA in order to give users of its iDEN wireless system access to Win32 apps, but ICA is likely to be built into a wide range of future products, including …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 11:26

  • Lucent and Ascend tie the knot at last

    Cisco not likely to be celebrating

    Lucent Technologies today ended months of speculation and agreed to buy Ascend Communications in a $20 billion stock deal, increasing competition in the communications networking arena. The phone equipment maker will exchange 0.825 of its shares for each Ascend share. That values networking manufacturer Ascend slightly higher …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 11:55

  • AMD K7 set to ship on 23 June

    Processor meets deadline by skin of its teeth

    AMD has pegged 23 June as the release date for its K7 processor, OEM sources in US have revealed. That date, if correct, will mean the chip will just meet AMD's original first half of 1999 release schedule. The news, reported this week on US newswire TechWeb, confirms what The Register learned back in October 1998. The report …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:07

  • MS can control prices because it's ‘the only game in town’ – expert

    So OEMs can complain, but they have to buy anyway, whatever the price

    Professor Franklin Fisher did a very much better job yesterday during the redirect examination by David Boies than under cross-examination, and made some effective, substantive points. He had apparently spent some 330 hours preparing for the case (for a fee of around $165,000 at his rates). To this, he'll be able to add the time …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:09

  • French users call second Net boycott

    Surfers maintain pressure on France Telecom to cut call charges

    French Internet users are planning a second Net boycott at the end of this month as part of their ongoing attempt to force France Telecom to cut dial-up call charges. User group the Association of Unhappy Internauts first called for a boycott of the Net on 13 December. That strike went ahead and was hailed a success by the group …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:21

  • Dixons sees sales and profit grow

    Things not that bad on the high street after all, then

    Dixons expects to create around 2,000 new jobs in the wake of healthy financials for the six months ending 14 November. Pre-tax profit was up five per cent to £80.9 million, up from the previous year’s figure of £77.1 million. The group said its retail sales had gone up by 11 per cent to £1.43 billion, against £1.28 billion for …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:30

  • Yahoo! Q4 results beat Wall Street predictions

    Annual revenues up nearly 300 per cent

    Yahoo! yesterday reported a $25.04 million profit on revenues of $76.41 million for Q4 1998. That put the Internet portal's earnings at 21c a share, well ahead of Wall Street's expectations of 16c a share. For the same period last year, Yahoo! recorded revenues of just $26.58 million, and profits of $1.9 million Taking fiscal …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:42

  • MS witness cites Linux advance in OEM channel

    But as it turns out, it's nothing you hadn't heard already...

    The incredible rise of Linux as documented by Microsoft’s highly-paid consultant proceeds apace. In his deposition (Cites 960 per cent Linux growth rate) he rolls his eyes over the OS’ amazing penetration in retail and OEM markets. But don’t get your hopes up. Says Richard Schlamensee, somewhat deeper embedded in his testimony …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:52

  • ML Integration buys itself a piece of telephony channel

    Takes on vendor's subsidiary

    Networking reseller ML Integration has acquired the Woking-based European subsidiary of Computer Communications Specialists (CCS), making it the first CCS reseller in the UK. ML Integration has already moved most of the 20 CCS staff to its division in Reading. Stuart Loins, ML Interactive divisional manager, said the sale made …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 12:53

  • AMD releases Mobile K6-2

    Toshiba, not Compaq, first to support notebook-oriented CPU

    AMD has at last released a version of its K-2 CPU aimed at the notebook market, as predicted here (see AMD to launch K6-2 for mobile market too). And Toshiba has announced it will use the part in its Satellite 2520 notebook. However, the machine will initially be only be made available to Japanese buyers. Originally, sources …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 13:46

  • Freeserve to hit one million accounts soon

    Excitement may be short-lived

    Whether you love it or loathe it, it's impossible to ignore the Freeserve phenomenon that in just 16 weeks has turned the UK ISP market on its head. Today, Dixons -- the company behind the free Net access service -- said that it now had 900,000 customers, making it the world's fastest-growing ISP. But as quickly as some parts of …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 13:53

  • Iomega gobbles up SyQuest for $9.5 million

    Storage giant nabs former rival's technology, but leaves its liabilities

    Iomega has announced it has agreed to buy "certain assets" of its erstwhile storage rival SyQuest for a cash payment of $9.5 million. The deal will give Iomega SyQuest's technology and intellectual property plus its inventory and US fixed assets. The purchase is conditional on the transfer of Iomega of inventory and equipment …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 14:15

  • PCI-X Gang of Three challenges Intel with Future I/O

    The next generation bus standard, they say, but it won't ship till 2002

    The PCI-X gang of three has recruited Adaptec to the fold, and announced a "Future I/O alliance" intended to build a high-performance I/O standard to replace PCI/PCI-X. In September (Earlier story) Compaq, HP and IBM peeled away from Intel to push the PCI-X. Intel gave the new standard a guarded welcome, but muttered through its …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 14:29

  • Bus wars loom as Intel and PC outfits form rival SIGs

    The server big three look tough, but Intel seems to be pulling a flanker on ship dates

    Bus wars seem certain to break out between two rival camps, Intel-led NGIO and Future I/O, which was announced today (PCI-X gang challenges Intel). The new model has the PCI-X triad, Compaq, IBM and HP, as ring-leaders, but will be locking horns with a heavyweight bunch of rivals, including Dell, Hitachi, NEC, Siemens and Sun. …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 14:34

  • News Corp mogul talks down the Web

    Follows hard on heels of launch of The Guardian's new site

    Media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, has publicly distanced himself from new media and the Internet. Speaking in Singapore yesterday, the boss of News Corporation said he didn't believe he was being left behind in the race to colonise the Web and that there was plenty of time to get involved should the right opportunities present …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 14:56

  • Cyrix releases new M II price list

    ...with immediate effect

    Here are the latest M II processor prices from Cyrix. Prices are quoted in OEM quantities of 1000 as per usual. M II-233 $45 M II-266 $47 M II-300 $52 M II-333 $60 ®

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 15:24

  • PC sales rebound in 1999

    US corporates, western consumers drive growth

    Worldwide PC shipments are slated to rise 15.4 per cent in 1999, against last year's growth rate of 9.5 per cent, according to the Nomura Research Institute. It forecasts sales of desktop, portable and handheld computers jumping to 106 million units -- with desktop sales up 14.5 per cent to 86.1 million units, laptop PCs up 18.2 …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 15:35

  • Dell joins Compaq in mass storage premier league

    The big shall get bigger

    Storage Area Networking, Fibre Channel and RAID may be heartsink stories (as in most journalist hearts sink when they have to write about them), but they also increasingly look like licences to print money for the seven, mostly hardware giants that dominate the storage systems scene. These companies -- Compaq, IBM, EMC, Sun, HP …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 15:39

  • Yahoo! takes pot shot at marijuana look-a-like

    Not just PR puff -- this is serious shit

    Spliff merchants behind the pro-cannabis Web site Yahooka! have until today to provide written assurances that they will close down their site and hand over their domain names to Net portal Yahoo!. Washington DC legal firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Grrett & Dunner, sent the letter last week informing the potheads that their …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 15:55

  • Schools hit by pirated Novell software

    Reseller passing off illegal copies of NetWare

    Novell UK has reached a six-figure settlement with GTi Networks, after the Salisbury-based reseller was found selling illegally copied software. Novell uncovered sales of the counterfeit copies of NetWare to more than 100 establishments across the country. The scam had been running for more than four years and had mostly …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 17:04

  • Advertising watchdog okays Compaq Y2K claims

    PC companies only responsible for their hardware -- not the system as a whole

    The UK's advertising industry watchdog, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), rejected complaints that Compaq advertisements claiming full Year 2000 compliance were misleading. The ruling provides a neat 'get out of Y2K hassles' card for hardware vendors -- even if a system as a whole isn't Y2K compliant, as long as …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 17:42

  • Intel makes more money than playing Monopoly

    Who can save us now from the Great Satan of Chips?

    Intel caught analysts cold with a superb set of Q4 results, smashing in-house records for revenue, earnings per share, net income, and shipments in all territories -- including the blighted Asia Pacific. Giving the FTC and conspiracy theorists something substantial to chew their teeth on, Intel declared total 1998 sales of $26.3 …

    Business 13 Jan 1999, 19:09