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12th April 1999 Archive

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  • CDMA's ‘big China win’ recedes as trade talks stall

    As the embattled standard fails to go live in China, GSM and TDMA are stealing all the prizes

    Stuck in an insipid Sino-American remake of "Groundhog Day", telecom investors have been once again forced to relive one particular event. It's that tantalising 'CDMA conquers China... next week' moment. By now, the plot is wearing thin. To make matters that much worse, few of us can emulate Bill Murray's character and wake up …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 09:07

  • MS warns of thinner times in European PC market

    Is the Redmond revenue train approaching the buffers at last?

    Michel Lacombe, President of Microsoft EMEA, is sounding a cautionary note about PC sales in Europe later this year because of the Y2K issue and the slowness of SMEs to renew equipment (Microsoft's preferred solution because of additional Windows' sales of course). Lacombe sees European PC growth being in the 10-15 per cent …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 09:10

  • Intel admits manufacturing Achilles' Heel

    Needs water and electricity but depends on utilities. Debate on Greek names ramps up...

    When we had our trip of Intel's Albuquerque fab earlier this year, we were somewhat alarmed when our guide said the local authorities had complained about its use of water. Albuquerque, being one mile high and in a desert, does not have a limitless supply of H2O and fab plants drink millions of gallons of the stuff. With this in …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 09:13

  • $320 million deal to drive One2One expansion

    Ericsson to supply base station kit

    UK mobile phone operator One2One is to expand its GSM network after announcing today it had signed a $320 million dollar agreement with Ericsson. Under the agreement, Ericsson will deliver radio base station and base station controller equipment, and AXE solutions to support continued growth and provide additional capacity for …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 10:00

  • Intel Coppermine to have 256K on die

    Xeons and Pentium IIIs both

    A distributor said today that he had a copy of an Intel roadmap which showed that .18 micron Coppermine technology will include 256K of on-die cache. The cache will be on both Pentium IIIs and Pentium III Xeons, according to the source, who declined to be named. The technology is waiting for the chipset to arrive but is expected …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 10:05

  • Western Digital sells media business to Komag

    Takes $20 million charge, axes 550 jobs

    Western Digital will take a fourth quarter charge of $20 million to cover the sale of its disk media business. The disk maker confirmed it had sold the business for 10.8 million Komag shares, a $30.1 million three-year note and $1.6 million in cash. It added that around half the staff in its media operation would be lost. Komag …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 10:10

  • Intel chops prices today…

    … at this rate they’ll soon be paying you to take 'em away

    As predicted in The Register last week, Chipzilla has today remarked the price tags on most of its desktop CPUs. The flagship PIII 500MHz has only been around for six weeks but that hasn’t stopped $60 being lopped off the price – in 1,000 unit terms it drops from $696 to $637. Its baby brother PIII 450MHz plummets from $496 to $ …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 10:22

  • Bleem beats Sony

    Round one of anti-emulation case goes against Japanese giant

    A San Francisco District Court judge ruled on Friday in favour of PlayStation emulator developer Bleem and rejected Sony Computer Entertainment's move to block sales of the emulator, also called Bleem. Sony launched its legal action against Bleem as part of its current policy to prevent any developer shipping software that runs …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 10:40

  • Internet fraud on increase

    Half of complaints to Visa Net related

    Internet fraud is on the increase and could severely impede the development of e-commerce unless action is taken to stamp it out, according to a report in the Financial Times. If left unchecked, the already fragile consumer confidence in e-commerce could disintegrate even before this much-heralded business revolution has even …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 10:46

  • Be readies BeOS 4.5, consumer drive

    Next BeOS release dropped to make way for PIII, USB support

    Alternative operating-system vendor Be has dropped an intermediate release of the BeOS, version 4.1, in favour of a major release, version 4.5, due to ship in June. The software's release will be accompanied by a major marketing push. According to new Be VP and Chief Marketing Officer Roy Graham, speaking at last week's two-day …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 11:21

  • Pfeiffer to talk on shock profit warning today

    We're all a quiver

    Compaq's CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer is to host a conference call this afternoon to discuss the massive shortfall in Compaq's financial results. (Stories:Compaq issues profits warning and Barrage of class actions hit Compaq and Deep schisms mar Compaq 64-bit plan) The call starts 8.00 am Eastern Standard Time, and it's a listen only …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 11:56

  • Game accepts Electronics Boutique offer

    Merged companies to retain own branding

    Electronics Boutique (EB) today announced a recommended cash and share bid for fellow electronics retailer, Game, at 134.3 pence. This morning's offer valued the share capital of Game at around £99.2 million, on the basis of 41.7 pence in cash plus 1.09 new EB shares for each Game share. The company planned to keep Game as a …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 12:00

  • Intel OEMs face tough ride ahead

    Analysis Intel's on the road to, er, you tell us

    Time was when Chipzilla's OEMs could relax in the knowledge that CPU speeds would go up and prices would come down. Then the Celeron appeared a year ago and muddied the waters. Sure, the first Covingtom Celerons were real dogs, lacking any L2 cache and being all-too-obviously a knee-jerk reaction to pressure from AMD in the sub …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 12:07

  • RealNetworks backs IBM digital music system

    Streaming media specialist to create consumer front end to Project Madison

    IBM today announced RealNetworks has licensed its Electronic Music Management System (EMMS), a day ahead of Microsoft's much-anticipated announcement of its own entry into the race to set the standard for digital music delivery technology. Financial terms of deal were not disclosed, but from a practical standpoint the agreement …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 12:13

  • ISP launches toll-free Net access for the sleepless

    X-Stream service only available from 12am to 2am, Monday to Thursday

    The X-Stream Network, which offered toll-free 0800 Internet access last month, helping it to attract an extra 65,000 new subscribers, has decided to extend the scheme indefinitely. Unfortunately, the new tariff-free scheme appears to be aimed at insomniacs who are happy to log onto the Net during the hours of midnight and 2.00am …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 12:27

  • 3dfx tech support says yes to Wrappers

    So why are the legal boys trying to kill them, then?

    A Register reader has mailed us with an intriguing corollary to the moves 3dfx made last week to threaten Web sites posting Glide Wrappers, software utilities that map calls to the company's proprietary Glide 3D graphics API to third-party hardware drivers. It appears that, unbeknownst to the company's aggressive legal team, its …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 12:44

  • Net millionaires crash Sunday Times wealthiest Britons list

    And it's all down to stock trading

    The Sunday Times' annual rummage through the bank statements of Britain's most well-off has unearthed some wealthy characters and a new breed sterling tycoons who have made their pile from the Net. Paul Sykes, who saw his £10 million investment in the ISP Planet Online swell to £47 million after it was acquired by Energis for £ …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 14:52

  • Eckhard Pfeiffer gives Innovate bad news

    It's sad but it's true

    The CEO of Compaq, Eckhard Pfeiffer, is now delivering to his 5,000 or so delegates at Innovate the bad news. Compaq is not doing well, as invented here, by me, the world's greatest IT journalist, early Saturday. The Register is not being allowed to attend Innovate this year but we have a stringer. So watch out for news later …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 15:03

  • Microsoft ‘dresses up’ Office 2000

    There's no bugs whatever -- official

    Microsoft forced its Office 2000 developers to wear dresses to ensure that bugs have been found and fixed, according to Kurt DelBene, general manager for Outlook. Whether or not this was indeed sufficient punishment for the developers is still open to question. Three of the team were women, although sources claim they regularly …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 15:14

  • ICL says Fridges are Office 2000 compliant

    It must be cool, then…

    ICL opened the doors to the world’s first Office 2000 fridge freezer in Nice today although it quickly denied it was moving into the mainstream consumer durables market. The fridge is a dark blue Electrolux model with wooden handles with an ICL PC integrated into the door. The touch-screen PC enables the less than average fridge …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 15:40

  • Ziff-Davis takes questionably strange position

    And it believes in the following...

    Read from here on... "We believe in the social and business benefits that come with new technology. We care deeply about the people who create these technologies and those who use them. "That's why at Ziff-Davis we don't just observe and report on high technology. We also accelerate its adoption by identifying the consumers on …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 15:55

  • 2.4GHz dead – official

    Proxim reckons HyperLAN is where it's at for wireless

    Proxim today forecast the death of the 2.4GHz band -- but only at the high-end -- announcing plans to endorse the HyperLAN standard and introduce a HiperLAN wireless LAN product line. The US-based wireless LAN manufacturer says the future lies with HyperLAN Type 1 wireless LAN standard. Proxim's new product line RangeLAN5 will …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 16:08

  • Voice over IP services to make $13.76 billion

    Businesses to sign up in droves as cost falls

    The European IP telephony market is set to generate $13.76 billion by 2005 -- up from $246.8 million today -- as the cost of the technology falls and the quality of the service improves. Consulting company Frost & Sullivan, which has published The European Market for IP Telephony believes the massive jump in revenue will arise …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 16:12

  • The Register: a mission statement

    Trust us, we're journalists

    The Register World View WE BELIEVE IN JOURNALISM We believe in the financial and social climbing benefits that come with new technology. We care deeply about our bank balances. That’s why we at The Register don’t just observe and report on high technology. We also accelerate its adoption by valiantly striving to make this …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 16:15

  • Dixons explores Freeserve sell-off

    IPO leads list of options

    Dixons has made the first official moves to sell off its Freeserve ISP after appointing Credit Suisse First Boston and Cazenove & Co to examine its options. In a statement, the electronics group said it would "explore the strategic alternatives available to enable its Internet service provider Freeserve to realise its full …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 16:21

  • Digital Nervous System not Bill Gates' idea

    Will the real DNS inventor please step forward

    So who invented the "digital nervous system"? Sit down, Bill Gates -- you first mentioned it in May 1997 when you said: "I want to talk about what I call the digital nervous system." By the way, did you see the account at www.c3f.com/nty0728.html? Let's deconstruct this digital nervous system of yours. Judith Dayhoff wrote about …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 16:28

  • One C2000 warehouse fits all

    Kicks off with IBM

    Computer 2000 has launched a scheme to centralise its logistics in one warehouse in Belgium, starting today with IBM disk drives. The move will control the distributor’s operations in seven countries for IBM storage products at the outset. It will later spread to the rest of Europe for all vendors. Computer 2000's centralised …

    Business 12 Apr 1999, 17:11