17th March 1999 Archive

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Compaq re-visiting Merced strategy

Chip dead, or just in a deep swoon

Insiders at Compaq have told The Register that the company is now taking a long hard look at whether Merced is worth bothering with at all. According to our highly unofficial source, Merced is showing little signs of life at the corporation. Engineers at Compaq whose job it was to look at the Merced architecture are now being …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 07:02
CeBIT 98: The Bootnotes of Lou

A year ago: At The Register, we take no prisoners

Deutsche Messe AG's apparent campaign to destroy Germany's reputation for efficiency took another giant leap forward this year. The Register habitually holes-up at the other end of an express train ride from Hanover, cunningly not catching the trains that stop at the special show station so we can get a seat. But these trains …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 07:31
Symbian to KO Microsoft at CeBIT?

If some more big outfits announce support, the war could be over before Redmond fires the first shot

What Bill Gates and St. Paul have in common is an annoying one-note evangelical zeal. In defence of the latter it has to be said that at least he was involved in creating a major religion and only had one conversion. Mr. Gates keeps getting new pseudo-religious epiphanies with alarming regularity - and they tend to be glaringly …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 07:51
Apple offers open source for Mac OS X Server

But for the moment, the company is pursuing a twin track strategy

Apple is going open source with its new server software, but as we predicted yesterday (Apple trails open source), it's going carefully. Mac OS X Server was released yesterday at $499, almost half the price previously intended, but at the same time Steve Jobs announced that the source code, dubbed Darwin, would be available free …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 07:53
AMD hires as it fires

Looking for motherboard designers

One of our friends at AMDzone reports an interesting snippet. He said he was on the way home when he heard an AMD ad. The company is looking to recruit motherboard designers. The 300 people out of the 13,800 personnel on its payroll which AMD said it would lay off are not connected with its chip business at all. However, with …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 08:07
Shannon declares Chipzilla Open Source word

Generous gesture by DEC watcher

Terry Shannon, who edits the influential newsletter Shannon knows Compaq has generously allowed free and open use of the word Chipzilla to describe the chip Goliath, nay behemoth, Intel. Shannon first coined the phrase in June last year. When he visited us a few weeks ago, the word lodged in our brain. But now we and everyone …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 08:16
Samsung ramps 256M SDRAMs in volume

Price will drop to just over $100/part in '99

The Korean Herald is reporting that Samsung has started to ship its 256MB SDRAM part in volume. The paper says that the 256MB chip will replace 64MB chips next year. While Samsung said that initial prices are expected to be just above $200/part, that will drop as volume increases, with chips costing just over $100 at some point …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 09:09
Chipzilla becomes caring, sharing dinosaur

FTC deal details expected today

Reports in the San Jose Mercury News late yesterday said that one reason Intel has got off the Federal Trade Commission's hook is because it promised to be more "sharing" in the future. The newspaper reported sources close to the FTC as saying that it will now give advance information to its customers (such as Compaq) even if …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 09:56
Register Message Forums open for biz

Debate on ISPs kicks off show

If our readers have not yet noticed, there's a little logo at the bottom of our right column which points to our message forums. We've started this as an experiment, please feel free to post your thoughts. The debate over responsibility for slow and lost connections is, we're sure, the first of many future discussions. ®

Business 17 Mar 1999, 10:17
Intel Celeron 433 to arrive Monday

Move to deck Slot One accelerated

Sources close to Intel confirmed today that it will introduce its 433MHz version of the Celeron this coming Monday. The 466MHz Celeron part is now expected to arrive in June. The 433MHz Celeron will cost around $165 at launch and will come in both Slot One and socket versions. But our sources tell us that Intel has now …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 10:25
Roldec rolls over

Liquidators to be appointed on 31 March

Roldec, the Midlands–based mail-order reseller, has thrown in the towel. The company has already ceased trading, and is seeking a voluntary winding up order. Yesterday, Roldec directors asked Deloitte & Touche in Birmingham to arrange a creditors’ meeting for March 31. A liquidator will be appointed at the meeting. Roldec ranked …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 13:17
Royal E-Mail backs security service with £100K bond

Postman Pat and his black and white secure ecommerce system

The Royal Mail has formally launched a secure e-mail service aimed at posting its 350-year-old business into the next millennium. Reported by The Register earlier this month ViaCode is being billed as the UK's "first secure service for business". And it's so confident that the service cannot be cracked, it's offering a £100,000 …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 13:20
Order your virtual drinks for St Patrick's Day

Now you can be a plastic Paddy online

Homesick descendants of the Emerald Isle too tight to buy a round of drinks on St Patrick's Day can e-mail as many as they like to friends instead. In celebration of one of the booziest saint's days in the calendar VirtualIreland.com is offering its readers the chance to send a virtual drink to anyone not already down the pub …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 13:30
AOL Europe fights back against free ISPs

Plans revolve around new Portal strategy

AOL Europe has take off the gloves and come out fighting against subscription-free Internet service providers. Stung by the phenomenal growth of free ISPs in the UK AOL Europe is worried that this same model could be replicated throughout Europe in a domino-like chain reaction that would jeopardise its position as a subscription …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 17:41
Intel escapes FTC noose

FTC levels playing field for litigious rivals

Well that didn’t take long. Last week Intel looked set for a short sharp shock in court with the FTC. This week, the company has wriggled more or less completely free from the anti-trust charges levelled against the company. For the Federal Trade Commission settlement -- agreed with Intel last week behind closed doors -- is not …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 18:06
CeBIT: Microsoft ‘licensed Java to kill Netscape’, McNealy claims

Three drops of poison

Microsoft licensed Java to kill Netscape, Sun CEO Scott McNealy claims. Speaking at CeBIT in Hanover, McNealy said Microsoft followed the licensing rules for about a year and a half, until it had damaged Netscape sufficiently. For Microsoft to drop Java support would be as serious a step as junking support for TCP/IP, he argued …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 18:17
Sun and Symbian strike EPOC Java deal

Momentum grows in the 'stop CE' camp

Sun and Symbian have announced an as-yet inkless alliance here at Cebit in Hannover to include Java with the Symbian EPOC platform. The expectation is for some 40 and 60 million users of wireless information devices in the next five years, with mobile phones able to reach one-sixth of the world's population by 2005. Symbian …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 19:12
Sun doesn't have an earthly with UltraSparc III til Q2, 2000

Tape out will not beat Compaq Alpha roll out

Sources close to Sun Microelectronics said today that while Sun could conceivably tape out UltraSparc III by year end, it likely would be Q2 of 2000 before we see systems. The insider told The Register that Compaq's Alpha chip, now CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer's preferred high end processor over Merced, was on target and would deliver …

Business 17 Mar 1999, 22:47