26th February 1999 Archive

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What MS OEM agreements really say

MS on Trial Quite a bit of the documentation seems to have fallen into our clutches...

Our recent coverage of Microsoft's new-look, flexible and liberal OEM licensing policies (sic) has prompted a helpful Redmondite to ship us some highlights from the Microsoft Windows 98 System Builder Preinstallation User's Guide. As Microsoft OEM chief Joachim Kempin has been saying all week, OEMs are perfectly free to install …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 09:06
Philips stalks VLSI with takeover proposal

Will it go hostile?

Philips has published a letter to Alfred Stein, chairman and CEO of VLSI proposing that the US firm submits to friendly takeover by the Dutch giant. Although couched in the politeness for which the Dutch are not famed for, the underlying message of the letter is clear. Philips is trying to bounce VLSI into accepting a deal, by …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 09:10
Come in User 2, your time is up

PC franchise outfit goes to the wall

User 2 Computers, which launched itself onto the PC retail market last year, has folded. Based in County Durham, the company went into voluntary liquidation on 4 January. Only last year User 2 aimed to open a dozen retail franchises at £105,000 a piece. Five were established before its fall. They are still trading and are being …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 09:51
MS exec in shock Windows is great white whale claim

MS on Trial And how come kindly Kempin was paying OEMs to stick to their contracts?

Confidential Microsoft documents referred to in court yesterday show that in 1996 the company offered OEMs financial inducements in exchange for their agreeing to use the standard Windows interface, rather than alternative shells. But bizarrely OEM chief Joachim Kempin claimed that the OEMs were already legally obliged to stick …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 11:05
Sony enters digital music contest with MP3-beater

Start of SDMI talks prompts flood of MP3-wannabe solutions

Members of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) will today meet in Los Angeles to begin the process of thrashing out a universal standard for compressing, encrypting and protecting music. But participants are already touting their own technologies. Earlier this week, Liquid Audio announced it was working with Texas …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 12:12
Soft landing ahead for AOL when Web stock bubble bursts

Modest stock price and rising tide of subscribers augers well

America Online (AOL) could be well insulated against the anticipated crash in Internet stocks, according to a columnist in Business Week magazine. Writing in the Inside Wall Street column, Mark Cavallone, of Standard & Poor's, said that AOL was trading at well below what it should be and that it is continuing to gain subscribers …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 12:25
LineOne leaves users in dark about going free

Is this a back down, a delay or just good old fashioned confusion

The MD of LineOne has cast doubt on whether the online service will scrap its monthly fee and join the growing band of subscription free services. In an e-mail to its existing 80,000 or so subscribers earlier this week, Andrew Burke said: "You may have read in the press lately about LineOne going free. "We are currently …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 12:27
Be boss offers OS to OEMs for free

But will Gassee's generosity really win Be new users?

Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassee yesterday promised PC OEMs a free licence to install the BeOS onto their products alongside Windows. In an article published on the Be Web site, Gassee grumbles that, for all Microsoft's claims at the DoJ trial that there are viable alternatives to Windows and thus the company doesn't have a monopoly, PC …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 12:57
Fore snaps up Irish telecomms software firm

Euristix goes for $81 million

US networking company FORE Systems has acquired Dublin-based Euristix Limited for $81 million. Under the terms of the agreement, FORE has issued five million shares and stock options in exchange for the outstanding shares and stock options of Euristix. The deal combines Euristix and FORE's scalable Internet backbone switches. …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 12:59
Intel anxious about Compaq Alpha threat

Pfeiffer's chip will give high end stuff run for money

Informed sources told The Register yesterday evening that Intel has serious concerns about potential challenges from Compaq's Alpha platform. The source used to work for Digital but was one of the bodies exchanged as part of the deal brokered by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). She said: "Alpha will give Intel's high-end …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 13:31
Intel pays for Pentium support from Linux compiler

Cygnus wins wedge to add MMX, SSE et al and Celeron, PII, PIII optimisation to GNUPro

Intel's attempts to inveigle its way into the Linux world -- Lintel, anyone? -- continued yesterday when it announced a deal with software developer Cygnus to modify leading Linux programming tools to support key Intel chip features. Cygnus said it had already begun work on adding support for the Pentium III's Streaming SIMD …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 13:38
e-Bay in e-trouble after copied MS software is sold on its site

Software Stan prepares to let loose the dogs of law

Troubled on-line auction house e-Bay is keeping its e-fingers crossed in the hope that the Microsoft legal heavies don't come e-banging on its e-door. A report in today's Financial Times claims that the great Stan of software is well and truly peeved that e-punters have been flogging knocked-off MS software via eBay. The report …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 13:49
Rapid sells MacLine as Apple readies channel cull

Apple UK wants to shift focus away from mail order and onto retail

UK reseller Rapid Group has sold its two of its four Mac channel operations, well-known mail order dealer MacLine and AppleCentre Cambridge. That leaves Rapid with Thames Valley Systems and London-based C J Graphics. The latter was acquired from previous owner Floral Street Plc only a few weeks ago. The move will see MacLine …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 14:43
c't magazine declares war on spam

Leading German magazine hits out at EU proposals

Leading German computer magazine c't is spearheading a campaign against the legalisation of unsolicited junk e-mail -- or spam -- by the European Union. Legislation currently being considered by the EU is calling for all spam to be clearly labelled so that people can see immediately what is bona fide e-mail and what is an …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 16:07
Corel to offer own Linux distribution

Company pins future on Linux becoming a desktop OS -- good luck, we say

Corel will next week announce its own Linux distribution, according the company's executive VP of engineering, Derek Burney. However, Red Hat, SuSE and co. don't quite need to start worrying just yet -- while Corel knows who it's targeting, it doesn't seem so sure about how it's going to reach them. Burney, quoted in an …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 17:12
Compaq profit scare hits tech stocks

Intel and Gateway dragged down after Compaq suffers poor Q1

Comments from Compaq that its first quarter results might be "a bit light" have sparked off a wave of decline across technology stock prices. It blamed slow sales into the SME sector. Compaq’s stock fell by around 16 per cent during the opening hours of US trading, so much of its stock was being shifted that at one point it was …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 17:17
Savage4 optimised for PIII says S3

Tech sharing deal with Intel continues to pay off

Intel's favourite 3D acceleration specialist S3 today announced one of the first fruits of its technology alliance with the chip manufacturer: the optimisation of its Savage4 chip-set for the Pentium III's Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE). According to John Brothers, S3's VP for architecture and software, optimising Savage4's ICD …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 17:36
Intel ships Pentium III, slashes PII prices

And source gives us news and date of 550MHz part

Chip giant Intel formally rolled out its first two members of its Pentium III family today but didn't make a song or dance about it. It did that last week, at the Preview. But sources close to Intel US said today that the PIII/550MHz is now expected to ship in May at prices of $750/1000. The PIII/500 costs $696/1000 and the PIII …

Business 26 Feb 1999, 21:03