15th April 1999 Archive
Browse by publication date, or search the site.
-
Intel will socket it, we'll see
Number of pins now the issue
Chip giant Intel's strategy on socketing future versions of its processors now seems to be taking shape. But the shape is protean. We reported Intel's move to the socket model two days ago and earlier this year. Now, according to Japanese wires, Intel is attempting to use its 370-socket for the Pentium III, with one of the …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 07:44
-
AMD to ship K7 in July
And Dell in company's sights
A poster on one of the myriad investor conferences claims to have heard AMD's CEO, Jerry Sanders III, outlining futures of the K7. According to the post, Sanders said a tier one OEM will ship a K7 box in July. At the same time, AMD's K62 mobile chip will appear in an IBM ThinkPad and in machines from Compaq, Toshiba and NEC. …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 08:04
-
Hardware site claims Transmeta scoop
Upgradeable CPU?
Our friends over at JCs are claiming to have privileged information on Transmeta. The information sounds valid and chimes with some of what we have already heard. According to JC, the CPU will have an embedded north bridge, use a proprietary socket design, 16Mb of "special" memory and a flash chip, allowing upgradeability. It …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 08:14
-
McKinley was assassinated, wasn't he?
So what's the future of the Intel chip
A US reader points out that President McKinley suffered assassination and wonders why, then, Intel code-named its son of Merced with that name. ®
Business 15 Apr 1999, 08:21
-
Gates: Free software and Linux are doomed
In the teeth of the evidence, Bill Gates continues to trot out the old Microsoft script
Do we note some ominous undertones to Bill Gates damnation of Linux yesterday? Claiming that he saw Linux as having only a limited role in the future, Gates put forward the suggestion -- apparently as an example of why Linux wouldn't work in the long term -- that browsers had now become so sophisticated that they could no longer …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 09:11
-
AMD posts huge loss
Best thing about Q1 is it's gone, Sanders says
As warned, AMD showed a huge loss of $128, 367,000 on turnover of $631,593,000 for its first financial quarter 1999. Revenues dropped by 20 per cent from its last quarter, when AMD managed to turn in a net profit of $22,321,000. But compared to the same quarter last year, AMD managed to show an increase in revenues of 17 per …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 10:22
-
Chipzilla sockets it to us…
More details emerge on slots vs sockets
It’s all change, but maybe not as fast as everyone thought Turns out that sockets will eventually be the order of the day for Intel, at least at the high end (as The Register has been pointing out for some considerable time). The mysterious Foster 32-bit chip, due to appear at the same time as Merced in late summer next year, …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 10:27
-
Intel to roll out 840 chipset in summer
The 820, of course, is late
While Intel blunders around in the midrange market trying to decide whether to go for PC133 SDRAM on the creaky old BX platform or to hang on hoping Camino will show up sooner rather than later with its support for direct RAMbus memory, the workstation guys are quietly getting on with the job of bringing the 820's big brother to …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 10:29
-
Apple growth twice industry average – almost
Update Q2 profits, revenues, margins up, inventory down
Apple yesterday added a sixth quarter to its run of profitable three-month periods. For the second quarter of fiscal 1999, ended 27 March, the company made $135 million on revenues of $1.53 billion. For the same period last year, Apple recorded profits of $55 million and revenues of $1.40 billion, representing year-on-year …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 11:01
-
Apple brings Beetle man on board
Ex-Volkwagen marketing chief to oversee Apple ads
Apple has confirmed it has brought ex-Volkswagen US marketing chief Steve Wilhite on board as the company's head of marketing, according to the San Jose Mercury. Wilhite's move to Apple was mooted earlier this month. His claim to fame is his role as the guy who spearheaded Volkswagen's introduction of the new Beetle, heralded a …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 11:15
-
Shortage of screens to push up notebook prices
Demand for flat-screen monitors is blamed
Falling notebook PC prices have bottomed out thanks to a shortage of LCD screens, according to several major vendors. The going rate for a mobile PC has fallen steadily over the last two-years, but looks set to plateau or even rise in the near future. Manufacturers agree the LCD shortage will impact notebook pricing, but can not …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 11:20
-
Careless email is like giving a child a gun
Oh no it isn't
The careless use of email can be so dangerous it's like giving a child an Uzi sub machine gun in some misguided hope that it won't run amok and cause widespread carnage. This graphic analogy is being used by Content Technologies Ltd which reckons that almost two thirds of office workers have risked their personal and business …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 11:27
-
Amazon sues Amazon
Bookstores slug it out over name. World's largest river "consulting my legal people"
Internet bookstore Amazon.com has been hit with a writ by a Minnesota bookshop also called Amazon. The real-world store's suite, filed with the Minneapolis US District Court, claims its virtual-world rival is infringing on its trademark and confusing its customers. "The rapid growth and vast size of Amazon.com, along with its …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 11:38
-
Ex-ilion faculty MD joins US company
Jones to lead European invasion
Julia Jones will join US Internet training company HyCurve as MD for EMEA. Jones, who recently resigned from ilion faculty, will head up HyCurve's planned expansion into Europe, followed by the Middle East and Africa. She will report to Michael Pinkman, HyCurve worldwide sales VP, when she joins the company next month. Carolyn …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 11:55
-
Action sees profit slip as search for buyer continues
Deal could be a matter of weeks away, despite financial woes
Action Computer Supplies may be in the process of securing of a buyer, but its latest set of figures is unlikely to prove helpful in this search. The reseller warned that it had experienced a significant downturn in January and February, according to a report in today's Financial Times. This downturn led to a fall in profit by …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 12:06
-
Kiddie porn stunt fails to hit Euro leaders
Queen has received no smut from Belgian activists
An extremist anti-porn group which claimed to have sent examples of child pornography to the Royal Family and European leaders, appears to have bungled its attempt to rid Europe of Internet smut. For while some sources, including the BBC, claimed that the Belgian-based Morkhoven Group had sent pictures depicting extreme acts of …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 12:44
-
Evesham takes PC price war below £300 mark
Cut-price PC not a response to Dixons, assembler claims
System builder Evesham Micros will join the PC price race this month with a sub-£300 PC. The new Zydec range, with Intel Celeron 300MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 4.3GB hard drive and 4MB video RAM with 32x CD-ROM drive, will start at £299 including VAT. The price does not include a monitor. Evesham says the range will be aimed at second- …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 12:49
-
Amazon sues Amazon 2
Update Amazons take up arms against leading Net bookstore
Following our report on an attempt by little-known Minneapolis Amazon Bookstore to sue very well known-indeed Internet bookshop Amazon.com, we received this interesting communication from a Register reader on the scene: "I am a Minneapolis resident and am slightly familiar with the suing bookstore in your article. One possible …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 14:48
-
ilion in talks with prospective buyers – official
Distributor confirms acquisition talks are taking place
Troubled networking distributor ilion Group this afternoon acknowledged it was involved in possible buyout talks. The ilion board said it was in "very preliminary discussions with a number of parties which have not reached any conclusion and which may or may not result in an offer for ilion." The statement to the stock exchange …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 14:59
-
IBM enters whacky domain land
Blue Buddha? Is it sure?
We've watched IBM register a number of new domain names over the last two weeks with growing disbelief. When we saw DEATHLORDS.COM our interest was aroused, and then we noticed it had registered THEPEOPLESEYEBROW.COM, which certainly made us sit up. SMOKEYSPALACE.COM and SMOKEYSPALACE2000.COM were interesting registrations too. …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 15:08
-
Shareholders kick AMD while it's down
More class action hailstones follow bad results
For a company that is supposed to be the underdog, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), seems to be getting little respite. Yesterday evening it turned in bad financial results but the class actions just keep coming. The latest this week are from Paul Nold, David Eidman, David Wu and Hossein Mirzaie, all naming both AMD and CEO Jerry …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 15:15
-
MS releases Win95 Y2K fix
And starts being really careful about checking your components, too...
As predicted here a little while back (see MS climb-down on 95 Y2K fix), Microsoft has issued a full Y2K patch for Windows 95. The patch, which is available here, is said by the company to fix all known Windows 95 Y2K problems, so magically the product will now run fully compliant (presuming they don't find some more) until 2035 …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 15:56
-
Corel: Linux to thrive like Windows in next ten years
But can Corel really wait that long?
Corel will release a beta version of its consumer-oriented Linux distribution by 10 August, company CEO Michael Cowpland pledged yesterday. He also promised Linux versions of CorelDRAW, WordPerfect Office and other Corel applications would ship early next year. Speaking at Corel's annual shareholders meeting, Cowpland said Linux …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 15:57
-
Willamette “will outperform K7 by 2X”
Great Satan of Chips set to hit clock speed of the beast 12 months ahead of AMD…
Following hot on the heels of AMD’s tragic Q1 results, Intel is twisting the knife by showing OEMs performance predictions stretching out until late 2000 featuring a Willamette IA32 processor rated at 1100MHz competing with an AMD K7 at a paltry 666MHz. No specific figures are quoted, but graphs pitting the rival chips against …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 16:14
-
Siemens changes name to Infineon
Low key announcement could herald sell-off
Siemens today confirmed it had spun off its semiconductor business as a separate company. The new entity is named Infineon, and the name change happened on the 1st of April, said a representative at Siemens AG press office. The release went out in German. The low key announcement has gone practically unnoticed by the press, but …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 16:42
-
StorageTek lays off 500 staff
Takes a $25 million hit to cover charges
Storage Technology will cut around 500 staff and take a hit of netween $20 million and $25 million. The US network storage vendor today warned it would lay off around half the employees in the second quarter. The moves are expected to save around $40 million a year. It expects to earn between 5 and 10 cents a share for the first …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 17:08
-
Intel will pay $3K for AMD's K7
But we will only pay $2,000 for one, if one is out there...
Inside Intel, there is a deal (or a competition) where if someone gets hold of an AMD K7 and its details, the successful winner will get $3,000. But at The Register, here in London, we will pay $2,000 for the same part. We will then attempt to sell it to Intel for $2,500, thus making $500 on the part. We know samples are out …
Business 15 Apr 1999, 22:21
